# South African Communist Party leader Chris Hani was assassinated in 1993 in a plot intended to derail the transition from apartheid

**Verdict: Proven.** The killing is documented beyond dispute: on 10 April 1993 the Polish immigrant Janusz Waluś shot Chris Hani, the general secretary of the South African Communist Party, in the driveway of his home outside Johannesburg. Two men were convicted in open court in October 1993: Waluś as the gunman, and the Conservative Party politician Clive Derby-Lewis for conspiracy, having supplied the pistol. Both were later denied amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which found they had not shown the killing was authorized by their party and had not made full disclosure. That the assassination was a political act aimed at wrecking the negotiated settlement is the well-supported core of this file. The narrower, still-open question, whether the two men acted alone or as the visible end of a wider network reaching into the apartheid security services, is reported here as an unproven allegation: it was raised at the TRC and in the press but never established in court, and this file does not assert it as fact.

Category: Government & Intelligence · Era: 1990s · First circulated: Within hours of the 10 April 1993 shooting, once the two men were arrested; the political intent was established by the 1993 trial and the 1999 TRC amnesty refusal, while the wider-network claims circulated from the mid-1990s onward · Believed by: That Hani was assassinated for political reasons is the settled, court-backed account accepted across the historical record. That a broader conspiracy reaching into the security apparatus lay behind the two convicted men is a persistent and widely voiced suspicion in South Africa, but it remains legally unproven.
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## Summary
On Easter Saturday, 10 April 1993, Chris Hani, general secretary of the South African Communist Party and a former chief of staff of the ANC's armed wing, was shot dead outside his home in Dawn Park, Boksburg, near Johannesburg. The gunman, Polish anti-communist immigrant Janusz Waluś, was arrested within hours after a neighbour noted his car's licence plate. Waluś and Conservative Party figure Clive Derby-Lewis, who had supplied the weapon, were convicted of the murder later that year. The timing was incendiary: South Africa was in the middle of the fragile negotiations that would end apartheid, and Hani was one of the country's most popular leaders. Nelson Mandela's televised appeal for calm is widely credited with holding the country back from wider bloodshed and is often said to have hastened the setting of an election date. This file separates the documented, court-proven assassination from the contested claim that a wider network stood behind the two convicted men.

## The claim
That Chris Hani was deliberately assassinated to inflame racial conflict and collapse the negotiations ending apartheid, that the operation was carried out by Janusz Waluś and planned with Clive Derby-Lewis, and, in the wider reading, that the two men were the visible edge of a larger right-wing and state-linked conspiracy that was never fully exposed or prosecuted.

## Origin and timeline
- 1992: Multiparty negotiations to end apartheid are underway but repeatedly stalling amid escalating township violence. Chris Hani, having stepped down as SACP general secretary's predecessor role and now leading the party, is among the most popular figures in the liberation movement, seen by many as a potential successor to Nelson Mandela.
- 1993-04-10: On Easter Saturday, Janusz Waluś shoots Hani four times with a pistol in the driveway of Hani's home in Dawn Park, Boksburg, as Hani returns from buying a newspaper. Hani, who had recently moved into the racially mixed suburb, dies at the scene.
- 1993-04-10: Margaretha Harmse, an Afrikaner neighbour who witnesses the shooting, notes the licence plate of Waluś's car and telephones the police. Waluś is stopped and arrested within hours. Clive Derby-Lewis, a Conservative Party politician who had lent Waluś the weapon, is arrested days later.
- 1993-04-13: With anger boiling over in townships and fears of a descent into open conflict, Nelson Mandela addresses the nation on state television, appealing for calm and discipline and pointing out that a white Afrikaner woman had helped bring the killer to justice. The address is widely credited with steadying the country.
- 1993-10-14: Waluś and Derby-Lewis are convicted in the Rand Supreme Court, Waluś of murder and Derby-Lewis of conspiracy for supplying the pistol and helping plan the killing. Both are sentenced to death.
- 1995-06: The Constitutional Court abolishes the death penalty in S v Makwanyane. The two men's death sentences are commuted to life imprisonment.
- 1997: Waluś and Derby-Lewis apply to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for amnesty, arguing the killing was a political act. In testimony and submissions, claims surface of a wider plan and a leaked intelligence document naming further figures; none is proven before the commission.
- 1999-04-07: The TRC's Amnesty Committee refuses amnesty to both men. It finds they failed to show the assassination was authorized by the Conservative Party and failed to make full disclosure of the plot, leaving open questions about who else may have been involved.
- 2015-2016: Derby-Lewis is granted medical parole in 2015 and dies of lung cancer in November 2016. Waluś is repeatedly refused parole until the Constitutional Court orders his release in November 2022; he is discharged on parole the following month.

## The evidence, claim by claim
- Claim: Hani was deliberately shot dead, not killed in an accident or a random crime.
  Evidence: This is settled beyond dispute. Waluś shot Hani multiple times at close range with a pistol outside Hani's home, and both the criminal trial and the TRC treated it as a planned political assassination. Waluś admitted the shooting; the only questions ever in play were the wider plan and the men's motives, not whether Hani was murdered.
- Claim: A court identified and convicted the people responsible.
  Evidence: Correct. In October 1993 the Rand Supreme Court convicted Janusz Waluś of murder and Clive Derby-Lewis of conspiracy, finding that Derby-Lewis had supplied the pistol and taken part in planning the killing. Both were sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment after the death penalty was abolished in 1995. It is that court record, not rumour, that anchors the attribution in this file.
- Claim: The killing was political, aimed at the transition, rather than a personal grievance.
  Evidence: This is strongly supported. The two men were open right-wing opponents of the negotiated settlement, and the TRC and trial record treat the assassination as an attempt to inflame conflict and derail the talks. The TRC's later refusal of amnesty turned not on whether the motive was political but on whether the party had authorized it and whether the men had told the full story.
- Claim: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission endorsed the men's account and granted them amnesty.
  Evidence: It did the opposite. In April 1999 the TRC Amnesty Committee refused amnesty to both Waluś and Derby-Lewis. It found they had not established that the Conservative Party ordered or sanctioned the killing, and that they had failed to make the full disclosure the amnesty process required. The refusal meant the men stayed subject to their life sentences, and it explicitly left doubts about who else might have been involved.
- Claim: Because a leaked document and testimony named more people, a wider conspiracy is proven.
  Evidence: This overstates the record. Allegations of a broader plan, including a reported intelligence document said to name additional figures and elements of the security services, were raised in the press and around the TRC. But no such wider network was ever established in court, no further individuals were convicted, and the TRC did not make a finding that a proven larger conspiracy existed. This file reports those claims as unproven allegations, not as fact.
- Claim: The men acted entirely alone, so there is nothing further to investigate.
  Evidence: That goes further than the record allows in the other direction. The TRC itself found the men had not made full disclosure and pointed to unanswered questions, and a hit list found in Derby-Lewis's possession suggested planning beyond a single target. The honest position is that two men were proven responsible in court while the possibility of others involved was neither confirmed nor ruled out.
- Claim: The assassination shaped the outcome of the transition regardless of who else was behind it.
  Evidence: Confirmed, and widely accepted. The killing brought South Africa to the brink of wider violence at the most fragile point in the negotiations. Mandela's televised appeal is credited with calming the country, and the crisis is often said to have pushed the parties toward fixing a firm election date, held in April 1994. That consequence stands independent of the still-open question of a wider network.

## Why people believe it
- The core facts are proven and stark. A beloved leader was gunned down in his own driveway at the most dangerous moment of the transition, and two men were convicted for it in open court. That solidity gives every reading of the case, including the wider-conspiracy version, an unusually firm foundation to build on.
- The timing looked engineered. Hani was killed just as negotiations hung in the balance, and the assassination came close to igniting the racial war his killers were said to want. To many, an act so precisely aimed at the worst possible moment felt too consequential to be the work of only two men.
- The state's later admissions fed suspicion. The TRC exposed a long record of apartheid-era security forces arming, funding, and steering right-wing violence, so the idea that Hani's killers might have had hidden backers fit a documented pattern rather than a fantasy.
- The TRC left doors open. By refusing amnesty partly on the ground that the men had not fully disclosed the plot, the commission itself signalled that the full story might not have been told, which is fertile ground for the belief that more remains hidden.

## Open questions
- Whether Waluś and Derby-Lewis acted alone has never been conclusively settled. The TRC found they had not made full disclosure and left the question of further participants open, so the possibility of a wider network is unresolved rather than disproven.
- The reported intelligence document and testimony naming additional figures, including security-service elements, were never tested to a legal finding. What weight they deserve, and whether they reflect a real conspiracy or the fog of a chaotic period, remains unclear.
- A hit list said to have been in Derby-Lewis's possession named other targets. Whether this points to a broader campaign that was interrupted, or simply to the two men's own wider intentions, was never fully resolved.
- With Derby-Lewis dead since 2016 and the TRC long closed, the practical prospect of any further findings about who else, if anyone, stood behind the assassination is now remote.

## Sources
- Assassination of Chris Hani, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Chris_Hani
- The TRC refuses amnesty to Hani's killers, South African History Online: https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/trc-refuses-amnesty-hanis-killers
- Truth and Reconciliation Commission: Amnesty Committee decision, Waluś and Derby-Lewis, Department of Justice (South Africa) (1999): https://www.justice.gov.za/trc/media/1999/9904/s990407f.htm
- 2 Convicted in S. African Assassination, The Washington Post (1993): https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1993/10/15/2-convicted-in-s-african-assassination/5bda7248-f2a8-4587-b76f-9dac68e61c9e/
- Janusz Waluś, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janusz_Walu%C5%9B
- Janusz Walus parole: South Africa's constitutional court was right, but failed the sensitivity test, The Conversation (2022): https://theconversation.com/janusz-walus-parole-south-africas-constitutional-court-was-right-but-failed-the-sensitivity-test-196055
- Chris Hani, Encyclopaedia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Chris-Hani
- Negotiations to end apartheid in South Africa, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negotiations_to_end_apartheid_in_South_Africa
- Statement on the parole and release of Janusz Walus, South African Communist Party (SACP) (2022): https://www.sacp.org.za/content/statement-parole-and-release-janusz-walus

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