Statement in the 31st annual commemoration of Chris Hani’s assassination
10 April 2024
Today marks the 31st year since the tragic assassination of Chris Hani on 10 April 1993. The assassination was planned to stop our country’s transition from apartheid to democracy. Above all else, the assassins were opposed to an advance to a socialist society. In their own words, they targeted Hani because he was a communist. Hani was a revered working-class leader. He certainly had a great leadership role to play in a democratic South Africa, which he dedicated his life to achieve. When the assassins assassinated him in cold blood, they also stole the life of Hani the husband, Hani the father and Hani the uncle, you name it all. Hani was a family man.
Consistent support for justice in Chris Hani’s case
As the SACP, we have consistently been with the Hani family in the fight for justice in his case for the past 31 years. We were with the family during the assassins’ trial. The assassins were convicted. They were sentenced to death. Because of the right to life that Chris Hani as a communist dedicated his life to achieve, their capital punishment was later commuted to life imprisonment.
We stood with the Hani family against the assassins’ appeal against conviction and the sentence. We were with the family against the assassins’ application to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for amnesty. Their appeal in the courts was unsuccessful, based on the evidence against them. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission denied them amnesty, the reason being that they failed to make full disclosure of the truth.
This is one of the reasons we still want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It is for this same reason, among others, that we stood with the family until the end against every application that the assassins made for parole. It is for the same reason that we initiated a signature campaign for an inquest into all the circumstances of the assassination of Chris Hani.
Let us recall. The murder weapon used in the assassination of Chris Hani was taken from military armoury. Who took it? Whose hands was it conveyed through, one by one, towards its destination where the gun was used to commit the assassination? These are some of the many questions that must be answered through an inquest to hold every person who had prior knowledge or role in the assassination accountable.
Now, let us turn to the question we face annually when we commemorate Chris Hani’s assassination. What would he say if he were still alive? We have consistently insisted that we cannot speak for the departed. However, we can highlight important points from their real-life activity.
Chris Hani never deserted revolutionary discipline, neither was he a political opportunist, nor was he self-centred
Chris Hani was a revolutionary activist from a young age as a youth activist and a student. He joined the ANC Youth League in 1957. Two years later, in 1959, he was exposed to Marxist ideas at Fort Hare University, where he went in the same year. This was in contradiction to the more liberal atmosphere that he found dominant at the university. He joined the Communist Party while he was still a student at Fort Hare University, in 1961.
A year later, in 1962, he graduated with a BA in Latin and English from Rhodes University. The same year he joined the real uMkhonto weSizwe, the MK. He had become a member of the ANC. As he rose through the ranks of our liberation movement, Chris Hani became a commander and chief of staff of the MK, the General Secretary of the SACP and a member of the ANC National Executive Committee, among others. We highlight these points to emphasise the fact that Hani never sold out the SACP, the MK, the ANC and the working class throughout his entire life.
In 1967, he participated as part of the MK Luthuli Detachment in three battles during the Wankie Campaign, fought together with the Zimbabwe African People’s Union, ZAPU, against Ian Smith’s Rhodesian forces in the Wankie Game Reserve. The liberation struggle forced Hani and others to cross into Botswana, where he was arrested and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment until 1968. After the sentence, Hani and several MK commanders later penned a memorandum. They robustly critiqued the ANC in exile, as well as its conduct of the struggle.
Chris Hani was not a thief. Neither was he a political criminal. Despite the challenges that he faced, both before and after he and the other MK commanders penned what became known as the “Hani Memorandum”, he upheld the discipline of the movement under difficult conditions that affected him personally.
Fast forward, back in South Africa after exile, MK operations were suspended and later the MK was dissolved. When the ANC NEC first made the decision, Hani was not present, and he held a different view. Once again, despite that, he upheld the discipline of the movement, observing the principle of democratic centralism and ensuring that the decision is implemented. In short, under the principle of democratic centralism, decisions made by higher organs of leadership are binding on individual leaders, members and lower structures, regardless of whether they held a different view.
Chris Hani was not a hypocrite
Chris Hani’s adherence to revolutionary discipline differs fundamentally from Jacob Zuma’s conduct, which is tantamount to a counterrevolutionary and treasonous behaviour. Let us recall. The first recall of a president of the republic under the ANC-led government occurred in 2008. It was after Zuma became the president of the ANC in 2007. That was the recall of President Thabo Mbeki. A faction led by the core of individuals who campaigned for Mbeki against Zuma broke away to form their own party.
Zuma called order against those who formed the breakaway for betraying the ANC and the discipline they were required to uphold. Now, the same man has stolen the name and identity of the MK to form his own party and contest the forthcoming elections against the ANC – the same organisation which made him the president of the republic.
There can be no doubt that Zuma is still bitter about his own recall by the ANC. But how did he embrace the recall of his predecessor, spearheaded and implemented under his leadership as the president of the ANC, if he is not self-contradicting?
Zuma’s recall was long overdue. It was essential to save South Africa. As covered in the report of the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture, a rot of Gupta and other private business capture of key levers of the state had entrenched under Zuma’s leadership as the president of the republic.
Let us continue to deal corruption a decisive blow
The SACP was the first political organisation to expose the existence of state capture in our country and to call for the establishment of the judicial commission. Zuma insisted that there was no state capture. He resisted the establishment of the commission, even after the former Public Protector, Advocate Thuli Madonsela, prescribed it as a remedial action.
It was not until the ANC’s 54th National Conference in 2017 endorsed the call for the establishment of the commission that it was established – under the direction of the new leadership of the ANC led by President Cyril Ramaphosa. We do not want another chance for the fugitives from justice, the Guptas, to bounce back.
We do not want the Guptas to bounce back, among others, through the very political and government leadership that enabled them to loot. We want them to be arrested, prosecuted and held accountable for the corruption described in the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture and the charges they face from the National Prosecuting Authority, among others.
Let us defend the democratic gains of our people and advance transformation and development towards a better life for all
Like Chris Hani, we remain loyal to the South African National Democratic Revolution, which improved the lives of millions of our people after our hard-won democratic transition from apartheid.
Today, millions of our people experience an improved standard of living. This has led to increasing numbers of the people building themselves better homes. It is the reason there are mansions in rural areas, similar to the likes of Sandton, Waterkloof and Camps Bay, and some even better. The ANC-led government has built and allocated homes for free for those who cannot afford houses for themselves, their majority being the working class and poor.
Before April 1994, the overwhelming majority of our people were deprived of access to household electrification, piped water, other water supply alternatives, as well as social and economic infrastructure development, such as roads in their areas, especially villages, as well as clinics and other healthcare facilities and services as Chris Hani once said. This ugly picture changed remarkably under the ANC-led government.
We have now advanced to near universal access to household electrification. We just need to build greater electricity generation and transmission capacity, so that South Africa can end load shedding sustainably and have greater power supply capacity going forward than going backward. Notable progress has also emerged from the expansion of access to water, although we still have a lot of work to do. There are tarred roads now in many areas where there was none before, including in rural areas.
Access to education has remarkably expanded. Educational attainments among our people, with the youth being the majority, have massively increased. We now have graduates in fields where our people were prohibited under the systems of colonial and apartheid oppression, white privilege, and racial and sexist job reservation. We even have doctoral graduates and outstanding researchers who come from rural areas, and their number is increasing.
By 2023, South Africa’s social grant system benefitted 27.3 million beneficiaries. Included in this number are approximately 18.83 million social grants recipients and around 8.5 million Social Relief of Distress Grant recipients.
There are more achievements. The only reason we stop here, in my focus on our democratic achievements, is that we have not come to this commemoration to spend our time permanently.
In addition, we need to go all out to defend Chris Hani’s liberation movement against sellouts and the entire spectrum of counter revolution from right-wing and liberal forces and their colonial masters. The immediate step we are facing is to campaign for a decisive electoral victory of the ANC and ensure that the ANC-led government implements the commitments that the ANC has endorsed in the 2024 election manifesto.
If implemented, the commitments will further expand access to water, education, skills training, and build more economic and social infrastructure. The commitments include transformation of the financial sector, including ownership, through building a state banking sector, a public retail banking system, and supporting co-operative banks to emerge and thrive. The macroeconomic and industrial policy commitments in the manifesto will contribute in no small measure to large-scale employment creation to reduce unemployment radically.
These and other commitments in the progressive thrust of the manifesto will help us achieve advances towards the eradication of poverty, reduction of inequality, and progress towards quality healthcare for all by implementing the National Health Insurance. These programmes will, if deepened and widened, along with expanding our democracy and building it to the highest level, be part of the socialist construction effort, as Chris Hani once said when he spoke about socialism in simple terms. This will be over and above the working-class struggle to eliminate economic exploitation and achieve complete social emancipation.
To sum it up, we must go all out to defend the advance to a better life for all, with economically and socially uplifting the working class and poor in all respects our immediate priority.
Chris Hani stood for the poor and all victims of colonial and apartheid oppression, discrimination and exploitation – black and white. He attached great importance not to any other socialism but to scientific socialism, which he would still emphasise deserves to replace the exploitative capitalist system and to live and advance to a communist society. To him, socialism was not an affair of a theoretical elite. It was a cause that the working class and other revolutionary and progressive sections of society had to fight for. In simple terms, he said socialism is about, among others:
- Work for the unemployed, with a decent remuneration, concomitant with the value that workers add in production, and in an environment where exploitation is systematically eliminated.
- Homes for the homeless.
- Land for the landless.
- Hope for the youth.
- A life of dignity for all, not least the elderly.
- Free and quality healthcare for all.
- Free quality education for all.
As a stalwart, Chris Hani is irreplaceable.
Our answer to the memory of our General Secretary has been, and must continue to be, collective, mass-based and grass-root mobilisation and participation in transformation and development.
Electoral court order on Zuma’s candidacy
We want to take this opportunity to call on the electoral court to urgently release the full judgment of the order it handed down on Tuesday, 9 April 2024. The order validates the candidacy of Jacob Zuma, who was convicted and sentenced to over a year of imprisonment for contempt of court. In its interpretation of the law, the Independent Electoral Commission had upheld an objection against his candidacy based on his conviction. The electoral court handed down the order against the IEC’s decision without giving any reasons. This has plunged the entire country into speculation. By urgently using the full judgment, the electoral court will enable public scrutiny of its rationale and allow the public and the IEC to determine whether there are any grounds for an appeal against the order and thus proceed accordingly.
Nevertheless, the Zuma brand has passed its sell-by date, except for a tiny minority who do not mind promoting the cult of personality. The fact is that millions of South Africans remain unhappy about the state capture and industrial scale looting that took place with the fugitives from justice, his friends the Guptas, at the helm. No reasonable South African wants to see a return to that rot, including through the ballot.
Long live the revolutionary example of Chris Hani, a combatant of the workers and poor!
Issued by Solly Mapaila, General Secretary, SACP, 10 April 2024
