Chris Hani

Shot on 10 April 1993 in the driveway of his Boksburg home by Janusz Walus on the orders of Clive Derby-Lewis; the murder nearly ignited civil war and instead forced the date of South Africa first free election.

Overview

Hani, the popular general secretary of the Communist Party and former MK commander, was the second most admired figure in the country after Mandela. Walus, a Polish immigrant and Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging-linked extremist, shot him with a pistol supplied by the Conservative MP Derby-Lewis, whose list of targets was found in the plot. Townships exploded; Mandela television appeal for calm was read as his presidential debut. The two killers were sentenced to death, commuted to life; Walus was stabbed in prison in 2022 and later released on parole. The assassination of the man many saw as a future president frightened the regime and the ANC alike into fixing the election date for April 1994. His memory remains the great what-if of the democratic transition.