Clive Derby-Lewis has denied having any information pointing to a ‘wider conspiracy†to assassinate South African Communist Party former general secretary Chris Hani in 1993. Instead, he says, it is the ANC, the SACP and George Bizos who have suppressed information about Hani’s safety on the day of his murder.
Derby-Lewis’s letter to the Mail & Guardian this week prompted a blistering response from the SACP, which says that it will not enter into a ‘tit for tat in public with the murderers of our late general secretary, comrade Chris Haniâ€.
SACP spokesperson Malesela Maleka says: ‘All our energies currently are focused on our 12th National Congress Resolution to campaign for a full judicial inquest into the circumstances surrounding the brutal assassination of comrade Chris Hani.
‘Their letter, however, underlines our belief that a full judicial inquest is necessary to fully establish the whole truth surrounding the assassination of Hani. That they talk about the fact that they have some apparently new documentary evidence underlines our call for a full inquest and goes to show the extent to which they lied to the [Truth and Reconcilliation Commission] TRC and did not disclose all. As the SACP we therefore cannot be used as a platform for these two to release information by stealth, ostensibly to try and bolster their case for a presidential pardon,†the SACP says.
In the letter, Derby-Lewis states that, during the murder trial in 1993, the ANC, SACP and Bizos suppressed information which ‘would have immediately put a stop to the rumours about why he did not have a bodyguard [on the day of his murder]â€. Derby-Lewis claims that his wife, Gaye, who was acquitted in the matter, submitted this information to the Truth and Reconcialition Amnesty Committee during the hearings, which took place in 1997 and 1998, after having searched police trial dockets in the mid-1990s.
Derby-Lewis says that this information is now a matter of public record, as it was entered as evidence during their amnesty hearing. ‘Despite this fact,†writes Derby-Lewis, ‘the SACP continues to circulate the rumour that Janusz Walus [who pulled the trigger] somehow knew Hani wouldn’t have a bodyguard on that fateful morning, which is patently untrue.â€
The amnesty committee states only that Walus ‘fortuitously noticed that Mr Hani was driving to the neighbourhood shopping centre without his usual security guardsâ€, which was when he decided to drive to his house and wait for him.
About a wider conspiracy, the committee ruled that, although there were ‘compelling arguments in favour of the conclusions that there was a wider conspiracy to kill Mr Haniâ€, the evidence did not conclusively establish this.
Walus and Derby-Lewis were denied amnesty in 1999 for failing to make a full disclosure to the TRC.