OWN CORRESPONDENTS, Cape Town | Saturday
THE Cape Town High Court has dismissed an amnesty application by the rightwing killers of South African Communist Party leader and liberation hero Chris Hani, saying they had failed to disclose all the facts surrounding the assassination.
Lawyers for Janusz Walus and Clive Derby Lewis, who are serving life sentences for the murder, had asked the court to reverse a decision by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) not to grant them amnesty.
But a full bench of the court ruled that the pair had not consulted anyone when formulating their assassination plans, nor had they intended to be caught or claim responsibility in public.
The hugely popular Hani was gunned down outside his Johannesburg home on April 10, 1993, a year before the country’s first all-race elections.
Walus and Derby Lewis were sentenced to death but this was commuted to life in prison after South Africa scrapped the death sentence.
The TRC – which can pardon crimes if the applicants make a full disclosure of their crime and prove that it was politically motivated – turned down their amnesty application in April 1999.
Walus and Derby Lewis claimed that they had killed Hani to save South Africa from a communist onslaught, but the Conservative Party denied ordering the murder.
The party has, however, funded the cost of the court application, as it had all the legal costs of Walus and Derby Lewis so far.
CP leader Ferdi Hartzenberg said it was unfair for them to remain in jail while the TRC had given amnesty to leftwing radicals who killed American student Amy Biehl and massacred church-goers in Cape Town before the 1994 polls.