EFF STATEMENT ON THE GRANTING OF PAROLE TO CHRIS HANI’S ASSASSIN
10 March 2016
The EFF notes, with deep sadness, the decision of the Pretoria High Court to grant Chris Hani’s assassin, Janusz Walus, parole which means he will be released from prison in two weeks time. It also means Janusz Walus, together with his co-assassin Clive Derby Lewis, will now be free from life sentences after serving only two decades. They will join a South Africa they sought to collapse into the cold and dark shadows of civil war, in protection of apartheid.
For us in the EFF, this decision brings the question of Chris Hani’s death back to our memory, as to whether it was in vain. The system that Walus killed Chris Hani to protect, the system of the protection and advancement of white privilege at the expense of the black people, remain intact. FW De Klerk, for whom people like Eugene De Kock worked, is still breathing the same anti-black air that informed apartheid and Walusz.
Therefore, Chris Hani’s death will remain in vain until the system of privileging white people at the expense of blacks is dismantled. The granting of parole whilst the system they killed Chris Hani to protect is still here, they render Hani’s sacrifice futile.
The systematic conditions that Walusz killed Hani for remain the reason why white people still look at blacks with disgust, hate and despise. It is the reason why people like Penny Sparrow see blacks as animals, as things amongst things. This means, Walusz took a fall for a system that has not itself fallen and he is coming out of prison to enjoy in a world where people of his race remain where they were when he killed Chris Hani.
The memory of Chris Hani should never be silenced for as long as black people are not free from landlessness, homelessness, under education in the country of their birth. The force of his memory must be greater than Walusz, it must elevate what Walusz represented, the systematic exclusion of black people from economic life.
As the EFF, we vow that we shall never forget, we shall never tire until what Chris Hani lived and died for it fully realised, which is the total economic emancipation of all our people.
Statement issued by the Economic Freedom Fighters, 10 March 2016
