On 10 April 1993, South African Communist Party leader Chris Hani was murdered in Gauteng. Local politician Clive Derby-Lewis and Polish immigrant Janusz Waluś were convicted for this crime. But suspicions of broader involvement still linger, with several now meticulously mapped out in a book published in 2024.
South Africa should learn from its history and lionise incorruptible individuals, says author and retired high court judge Chris Nicholson. At the same time, “the bad guys” should be “demonised”. “It would be so nice if the bad guys can go to jail occasionally,” Nicholson says during a phone interview with Daily Maverick on Wednesday, 17 December 2025.
His words emphasise an accountability deficit when it comes to dealing with State Capture crimes in South Africa. Nicholson’s latest book,Who Really Killed Chris Hani?, focuses on this issue – accountability, or a lack thereof, in terms of the anti-apartheid activist’s assassination on 10 April 1993 in Boksburg. Hani’s murder was an attempt to derail South Africa’s transition from racist apartheid rule to democracy.
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Two men – Polish immigrant Janusz Waluś and local Conservative Party founding member Clive Derby-Lewis – went on to be convicted in connection with the killing. Derby-Lewis died in 2016, while Waluś, after spending about 30 years in jail in South Africa, was released on parole in 2022. Early in 2025, he told eNCA’s Annika Larson that elements of military and navy intelligence were involved in a plot to destabilise the broader political landscape. Of the Hani murder, Waluś told Larson that there was no reason to “look for a bigger story here” to be used “by members of the ANC against each other”.
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