SOUTH AFRICA: TRUTH COMMISSION AMNESTY HEARING RECONVENES (2)

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• published: 21 Jul 2015
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English/Nat A lawyer for the family of South African Communist Party leader Chris Hani said on Monday that his killers do not deserve amnesty because they lied about being solely responsible. The statement came at the start of one of South Africa's toughest Truth Commission hearings to decide whether to free the men who murdered Hani in 1993, nearly wrecking the transition from apartheid. The killing of Hani, who was perhaps South Africa's most popular black leader after Nelson Mandela, threatened to plunge the country into chaos and derail the first all-race elections the following year. Conservative Party supporters said prayers for Clive Derby-Lewis, a former Conservative Party deputy in Parliament, and Janus Walusz, a Polish immigrant and fierce anti-communist. The two men were jailed for the murder of South African Communist Party leader Chris Hani in 1993. Here in Pretoria on Monday, South Africa's Truth Commission sat to decide whether to grant an amnesty to Derby-Lewis and Walusz. South African Communist Party supporters were also there, calling for the two men to remain in jail. Zanele Mbeki, wife of South African Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, and Gauteng Premier Tokyo Sexwale arrived for the hearing. They were followed by Hani's daughter, Nomakwezi Hani, and his widow Limpho. Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the former wife of South African President Nelson Mandela, was also there. The hearing was postponed in June to allow Limpho Hani to attend. It was moved from Benoni, 50 kilometres (30 miles) east of Johannesburg, where Hani once lived, to Pretoria after Hani supporters disrupted the June proceedings. Security at the hearing was tight. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is a panel set up by Mandela's government to collect evidence on apartheid-era crimes by all sides. It can grant amnesty to those who fully confess politically motivated crimes. George Bizos, a lawyer hired by Hani's family, opened the amnesty hearing for the two men convicted of gunning down Hani outside his home by presenting statements they allegedly made to police after their arrest. Bizos said the statements by Derby-Lewis and Walusz contradict testimony from their trial and amnesty applications. But lawyers for Derby-Lewis and Walusz say the statements made to police were not given freely. The two men - whose death sentences for Hani's killing were commuted to life in prison after South Africa's new constitution abolished the death penalty - have claimed they alone were responsible for killing Hani. Derby-Lewis' wife Gabrielle was acquitted of involvement. Bizos says Derby-Lewis had links to the extreme right and was a "pathological anti-communist, anti-Jewish conspiracy type." The lawyer also said he would also show the killers did not act on behalf of the Conservative Party, which has distanced itself from the killing. He said the men's statements show that other people were involved in Hani's shooting and that Mrs. Derby-Lewis was an active participant in the planning. SOUNDBITE: (English) "We are going to persist in our intention to place those statements before the court because in our respectful submission they contradict the case which the applicants are trying to put before the amnesty committee, and above all they contradict the evidence of Mrs. Derby-Lewis who gave evidence before the judge president of the Transvaal." SUPER CAPTION: George Bizos, Lawyer for Hani family The Truth Commission's amnesty committee broke off the hearing to debate the statement's admissibility. Asked why the statements did not come out before, Bizos said the attorney general may have taken a stricter view of the admissibility of the documents in a formal court trial. You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/1ba44e567dcf2b8c5266a06ab52e5e2d Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork