A silence at Chris Hani's commemoration
There are times when silence speaks louder than words, and this was so at Chris Hani's commemoration in Boksburg on Monday 10th April, the 24th anniversary of his murder.
President Jacob Zuma laid a wreath and addressed the gathering, which included Hani's widow, Limpho, declaring Hani to have been an "example of what a revolutionary was supposed to be."
Yet a silence hung over the event. No word was said, or could be said, about the gulf between the powerful tribute which Chris Hani paid in November 1989 to his murdered comrade and fellow MK commander, Thami Zulu, when he was buried, compared with the silence at that time and ever since of Jacob Zuma, who'd held absolute command over TZ's detention as deputy head of the ANC security department, Mbokodo.
I believe that as a senior MK commander who had grown up in a middle class isiZulu-speaking family in Soweto and who was privately educated in Swaziland, it was his loyalty to the then dominant and mainly Xhosa-speaking leadership in the ANC and MK in exile which caused Thami Zulu (birth name, Muziwakhe Ngwenya) to be considered a traitor by KZN-born members of the ANC security apparatus.
This is my theory about his poisoning in Lusaka in November 1989 while under very close supervision, within days of his release from 17 months detention by Zuma's wing of the ANC security police, Mbokodo.