Why Chris Hani's killer Clive Derby-Lewis should not get parole
The issue of parole for Clive Derby-Lewis, the convicted killer of Chris Hani, is once more the subject of some public debate. The SACP, ANC and the Hani family have consistently opposed the granting of parole to Derby-Lewis and his convicted co-conspirator, Janusz Walus. In opposing parole we are confident that we are also expressing what is a widespread view among South Africans of diverse political persuasions.
However, Derby-Lewis is now reported to be suffering from terminal cancer and this has provoked a degree of sympathy and not only from his hard-core, right-wing supporters. Some of the more well-meaning argue that the humaneness of a society should be judged, in part, by how it treats its prisoners. I think that is correct. They go on to argue that we are a rule-governed, constitutional democracy and that we should not seek to emulate the barbarism of the past. I agree.
But let's start by reminding ourselves of what the law actually says about parole. Section 79 of the 1998 Correctional Services Act deals with medical parole. It states: "Any person serving any sentence in a prison and who, based on the written evidence of the medical practitioner treating that person, is diagnosed as being in the final phase of any terminal disease or condition may [we stress MAY] be considered for placement under correctional supervision or on parole..." The purpose of such a parole, the Act continues, is to allow the person "to die a consolatory and dignified death".
The operative word here is "may", not "must". There is no legal imperative on the state to parole prisoners in the final phase of a terminal disease. Furthermore, in the spirit of humanism, let's accept that dying a "consolatory" and "dignified" death is not something we should wilfully deny anyone. (Although, it's something that Derby-Lewis and Walus clearly denied Chris Hani).
As the SACP we believe that Derby-Lewis is being treated with medical professionalism in hospital and that when not in hospital the conditions in Pretoria Maximum Security are humane. As a former inmate of that facility, as a guest of the apartheid regime back in the 1970s and 80s, I can vouch that conditions for current inmates are immeasurably more humane than when I was there.
Let's also remember that Derby-Lewis and Walus were sentenced to death in 1993 for Hani's murder. Unlike the dozens of MK cadres and thousands of common law prisoners who were hanged on the gallows in Pretoria Maximum Security, Derby-Lewis and Walus were reprieved from decidedly undignified deaths by the new dispensation driven by the ANC-alliance that abolished the death penalty.
But our arguments against a parole for Derby-Lewis take in a wider set of political considerations. On Derby-Lewis's own admission (at his failed TRC amnesty hearing), the assassination of Comrade Chris Hani was not just another of the thousands of killings of political activists in the apartheid era. With the CODESA negotiations process perched precariously in April 1993, the assassination of one of the most popular resistance heroes was designed to provoke a racial civil war that would sink the negotiations and plunge the country into black and white bloodshed. They were actively planning a catastrophe. The hit-list that was found on Walus immediately after the killing also included Nelson Mandela and Joe Slovo.
Neither Derby-Lewis nor Walus have expressed any remorse for their actions, nor have they implicated any others in what was, nonetheless, manifestly a much wider conspiracy. This has made them heroes in ultra-right extremist circles in SA and to some extent internationally. Remorse was not a requirement in the TRC's amnesty process, but it should surely be an important factor when considering parole. In the case of a prisoner serving a life sentence, only a court can decide on parole - surely any court would want to consider the propensity for further offending. An ailing and ageing Derby-Lewis may well be unlikely to go out and perform assassinations. Although let us remember that Derby-Lewis was not the actual hit-man in the Hani killing. Derby-Lewis was the one who procured the gun for Walus and it was he, through his wife Gaye, who secured the hit-list with home addresses for Hani, Mandela, Slovo and others.
Even if a paroled Derby-Lewis was no longer inclined to be actively involved in the background of a right-wing conspiracy, he will certainly be regarded as a model by the National Front protestors who have lately been demonstrating on his behalf. And what about Gaye Derby-Lewis's recent outburst? She characterised the SACP as "street terrorists" because we are not supporting the parole application. The claim that Hani was a "communist terrorist" was precisely the justification Derby-Lewis and Walus advanced for the murder in their amnesty applications. There are still nasty people out there and Derby-Lewis has not disassociated himself from them.
Then there is the wider matter of disclosure. I represented the SACP throughout the many months of the Derby-Lewis and Walus amnesty hearings. Our main objective as the SACP was not necessarily to prevent these assassins from getting amnesty (as much as that went against our emotional feelings), but rather the more important political objective was to use the possibility of amnesty to leverage the exposure of the wider conspiracy and the controlling hands behind Comrade Chris Hani's assassination.
In the end, the two failed in their amnesty application largely because they were so busy covering up for others that it was quite clear that their "disclosures" were riddled with inconsistencies. The most obvious cover-up related to the role of Gaye Derby-Lewis in the affair. She had been charged with the two others but found not guilty by the court that sentenced the two men to death (incidentally Gerrie Nel was the prosecutor in the case). This meant that at the subsequent TRC amnesty hearing it was patently stupid of Derby-Lewis to cover up for his wife, since she was not at risk of imprisonment. So why this cover-up which probably cost them the chance of amnesty? It's possible they were denying her role in order to protect a much wider network.
It was Gaye Derby-Lewis who obtained the hit-list with addresses and descriptions of homes including security features from a journalist, Arthur Kemp. Kemp was working on The Citizen at the time but is widely reputed also to have been a security policeman. Kemp was arrested along with the Derby-Lewis couple and Janusz Walus soon after the Hani assassination. But he was quickly released and mysteriously disappeared out of the country. He re-emerged subsequently in the UK where he became a leading spokesperson for the neo-Nazi National Front. A few years ago the BBC did a television story on his role in SA, the Hani assassination, and his subsequent activities in the UK. One allegation is that in the UK he was posing as an ultra-right-winger on behalf of British intelligence in order to gather information on these circles.
Another murky figure in the Derby-Lewis/Walus circle is Janus's older brother Witold. Witold had extensive connections to the old SADF and was involved, amongst other things, in selling used army vehicles - possibly a cover for other activities. It was on Witholds's small-holding north of Pretoria that Janusz tested the Hani assassination gun.
The gun itself had a peculiar provenance. It was one of the weapons that had been "stolen" from an air-force armoury in a raid by the Orde Boerevolk, led by Piet "Skiet" Rudolph - a former security policeman. Many South African right-wingers still believe that Rudolph (like Arthur Kemp) was still a security policeman at the time, but using right-wingers as part of a false flag operation to intimidate the ANC in the midst of the negotiations process. Derby-Lewis obtained the gun from another right-winger in Krugersdorp, but we were unable in the amnesty hearing to discover how many hands it has passed through, and how and why, before being used to kill comrade Chris Hani.
Then there was Janusz's "employer", Peter Jackson, a "chemicals transporter". Janusz worked as a truck-driver for Jackson and this involved numerous trips across the SA-Botswana border, ostensibly transporting chemicals and "glass-ware" from the Walus family factory. It is hard to believe that these businesses had such an active market for their products in Botswana. One possibility is Janus was transporting military equipment to UNITA in southern Angola.
The investigation into Comrade Hani's murder was nominally led by Michael Holmes of the Brixton Murder and Robbery Squad. Peter Alexander was, in theory, a person of interest to the investigation. However, according to the Dutch investigative journalist, Evelyn de Groenink, Holmes was instructed by the Security Police not to pursue Jackson. De Groenink has had access to a written instruction from the Security Police reading: "Inligting oor Peter Jackson sal nie opgevolg nie." ("Investigation into Peter Jackson will not be followed up."). Holmes told de Groenink that: "We didn't need to look at all the evidence because the Security Police put everything we needed in a box for us."
De Groenink has published a book in Dutch linking the assassinations of Dulcie September in Paris, Anton Lubowski in Windhoek, and Chris Hani. When Jacana publishers in South Africa attempted to bring out an English edition, they were threatened with costly pre-publication litigation by a range of arms trade personalities. Witold Walus actually sued Jacana. The English publication was aborted.
Whether de Groenink's wider conspiracy theory, linking the three different assassinations, is well-grounded or not is an open question. She has certainly unearthed important additional information on the Hani assassination not previously known to the SACP. Interestingly, de Groenink believes that Walus and particularly Derby-Lewis were actually convenient fall-guys, "patsies" (a bit like many believe Lee Harvey Oswald to have been in the Kennedy assassination). By containing the investigation to two bumbling right-wing extremists - a Polish immigrant with a deep anti-communist hatred, and a vainglorious, dad's army white supremacist - those really behind the assassination, according to de Groenink, diverted attention from the intelligence, military and arms dealer networks behind the murder.
If that's the case, then perhaps we are doing Clive Derby-Lewis a favour by not letting him out of prison. There may be dangerous "friends" who would like to ensure that he keeps his mouth shut.
Cde Jeremy Cronin (JC) is SACP First Deputy General Secretary.
This article first appeared in Umsebenzi Online, the online journal of the SACP.
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