Killer Details Anti-Apartheid Leader’s Death

One of South Africa’s most notorious assassins told for the first time Thursday how he pumped four bullets at close range into Communist leader Chris Hani, hoping to kill a negotiated end to apartheid.

Hani’s widow, Limpho, and her daughter watched, flinching, from the audience at Pretoria City Hall, as Polish immigrant Janusz Walus, seeking amnesty from South Africa’s truth commission, revealed how he planned and carried out the 1993 assassination.

Walus told the commission he had been a devout foot soldier doing the bidding of his co-plotter and now amnesty co-applicant, Conservative Party politician Clive Derby-Lewis, to please their masters on the far right.

Derby-Lewis selected Hani as the man to die, but Walus was the lone assassin.

Walus said Derby-Lewis gave him a list of enemies of the right wing: African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela was No. 1, leading white Communist Joe Slovo second, followed by Hani.

Walus said he had staked out Hani’s home near Johannesburg. On the Saturday of the Easter weekend in April, he decided it was time to kill the black leader.

He discreetly followed Hani’s car on a morning trip to a nearby shopping center but decided that it was too crowded for him to strike. Walus followed him home again.

“I saw Hani move away from the car. I didn’t want to shoot him in his back. I called, ‘Mr. Hani.’ When he was turning, I took out the pistol from the belt and shot the first time into Mr. Hani’s body,” he said.

“I shot a second bullet into his head. When he fell on the ground, I shot him twice behind his ear, then got into my car and moved away,” Walus said. The last two shots were at point-blank range.

He and Derby-Lewis, who testified before Walus, were sentenced to death, now commuted to life imprisonment.