Angella Johnson
They faced each other like gladiators in the truth commission arena; two battle- scarred adversaries in a fight to decide if the killers of Communist Party leader Chris Hani should be granted amnesty and walk free.
The verbal sparring between civil rights advocate George Bizos and the formidable racist grand dame Gaye Derby-Lewis was pure theatre, played out in the huge indoor sports stadium at Vista University’s Mamelodi campus this week.
In his usual laid-back style Bizos, the Hani family lawyer, endeavored to break Derby-Lewis’s testimony that she had not known of her husband’s involvement in Hani’s murder and that it was not part of a wider conspiracy.
He rolled his eyes upwards, sighed audibly and on several occasions snapped at her for interrupting his questioning as he painstakingly hammered away at her testimony.
She appeared equal to the cross-examination tactics, occasionally shouting at him in a belligerent high-pitched squeal and generally side-stepping many of his questions by either stating she did not understand, or could not recall.
But on the first day of the hearing Derby- Lewis admitted she had lied “two or three” times to protect her husband during his trial. “I prevaricated, in fact, I lied to protect my lover,” she told the commission on Monday.
Derby-Lewis said she had not been truthful when asked about how her husband had got a 19-name list of people to be assassinated. She said the so-called hit list, which included Hani’s name, had been compiled by her as a journalist for the purpose of obtaining interviews.
She was clearly not intimidated by Bizos, who was admonished by chair Judge Hassen Mall for sarcastic comments during the cross-examination. When accused of involvement in the assassination plot, she held her ground, insisting she had not been told.
Her husband – who was a Conservative Party MP – and Polish immigrant Janusz Walus were convicted in 1993 of gunning down Hani in the driveway of his Boksburg home.
Derby-Lewis, who is supporting her husband’s amnesty application on the ground that the killing was politically motivated, also said she lied in handwritten statements made while being held under Section 29 of the Internal Security Act.
They include the statement that “Clive and I had vague plans in the beginning that we should liquidate one or more leaders of the ANC”. She claimed this statement had been made under pressure from two police officers. However, taped segments of her police questioning showed her relaxed and joking with the police.
Police advocate Johan Brand later introduced evidence refuting her claim that she had been maltreated by a Captain Nic Deetlefs. He said the officer had been kind to his suspect and one occasion had told her: “Darling, you must be strong.”
She agreed, but insisted that was when he was playing good guy after having interrogated her in an aggressive manner previously.
Derby-Lewis, who wore no jewellery except a watch and her wedding ring, told the hearing she and her husband had minimal contact with the extreme Right.
“I personally, and that is not for the record, thought they were crackpots and an embarrassment to the cause,” she is recorded as saying during the police interview.
“We did everything we did through the Conservative Party. There were times when we would go to a function and there would be AWBs [Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging members] there and I just found them to be on the wrong track. Not that I have anything against militancy.”
In a moment of drama during Tuesday’s hearing, Mall halted the proceedings after receiving complaints that the prisons’ authority planned to put Hani’s killers in leg-irons before taking them back to jail.
Mall was forced to issue an apology after meeting briefly with representatives from the prison service.
“I have been given an undertaking that nothing will be done in terms of chaining and handcuffing the detainees,” assured Mall.
The incident resulted in a rare media response from Hani’s widow, Limpho, who is on the correctional services parliamentary committee. She denied having influenced the prison’s decision to use shackles.
“I heard about it for the first time today like everyone else,” she said. “It makes no difference to me if they are handcuffed or not. It can’t bring my husband back.”