Janusz Walus, the extremist who killed South African Communist Party (SACP) leader Chris Hani in 1993
Janusz Walus, the extremist who killed South African Communist Party (SACP) leader Chris Hani in 1993, will be deported to Poland on Friday, Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber said.
The step coincides with the end of Walus’s parole period, after his release from prison two years ago.
“The deportation will take place today still,” Schreiber said, adding that Poland would cover the cost of the deportation.
The decision to deport Walus was taken by ministers in the justice cluster, and approved by the cabinet on Wednesday, Schreiber added, but deliberately not made public until his deportation was imminent.
Walus had been considered a security risk while on parole.
Presidency Minister Khumbudzo Ntshaveni said the decision to return him to his native Poland was informed by the fact that Walus “no longer holds any enabling South African documents”.
He lost South African citizenship in 2017, and was granted residency, in terms of an exemption under the Immigration Act, after his release from prison to allow him to serve his parole period in the country.
Ntshaveni added that the decision to deport him had been conveyed to the Hani family by Deputy President Paul Mashatile.
The family had bitterly opposed Walus’s release on parole, as had the SACP.
Walus was initially sentenced to death for killing Hani in an act that brought South Africa to the brink of civil war in the dying days of apartheid.
The sentence was converted to life after the death penalty was declared unconstitutional. He spent four years fighting for parole before he was finally released after 28 years in jail.
Former justice minister Ronald Lamola in 2020 rejected his last parole bid, on the grounds of the severity of the sanction the trial court had imposed for murder committed in cold blood, with the intention to stabilise the country when it was on the brink of transition to democracy.
“The record before me clearly reveals that the court took this fact into consideration when sentencing Walus to death. The crime was intended, and had the potential, to bring about a civil war within the republic at the time.”
The decision was struck down as irrational by the constitutional court in November 2022.
In a unanimous judgment, penned by former chief justice Raymond Zondo, the court was mindful of the severity of the crime, and the calamity it nearly caused, but also of the fact that those who drafted the Constitution, adopted a few years later, intended all and not just those who supported the transition to democracy, to enjoy fundamental rights.
“I have also borne in mind that when the fathers and mothers of our constitutional democracy drafted our Constitution, and included in it the bill of rights, they did not draft a bill of rights that would confer fundamental rights only on those who fought for democracy and not on those who had supported apartheid or who had opposed the introduction of democracy in this country,” Zondo said.
The apex court ordered that Walus be released within 10 days.
He was stabbed by a fellow inmate at the Kgosi Mampuru II Correctional Centre in Tshwane three days before that deadline expired but not severely injured.
At the time of his release, there was resistance to eventual deportation because the rightwing Law and Justice Party was in power in Poland at the time. The party lost its parliamentary majority last year.