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South Africa’s Constitutional Court has ordered the death of Janusz Walus, the man jailed for killing anti-apartheid leader Chris Hani in 1993.
Hani murdered his home in Boksburg, east of Johannesburg, outdoors in an assassination that threatened to plunge South Africa into political violence ahead of its transition from white minority rule to democracy.
Hani, head of the army wing of the ruling African National Congress, Umkhonto we Sizwe, and general secretary of the Communist Party of South Africa (SACP).
Walus, now a 69-year-old Polish citizen, was sentenced to life imprisonment and his applications for parole were rejected by several justice ministers.
He convicted along with Clive Derby-Lewis, who was released on medical parole in 2015 and died in 2016.
However, the Constitutional Court unanimously favored Walus after reviewing Justice Minister Ronald Lamola’s 2020 ruling to reject his request.
According to the ruling, Walus is expected to be released on parole within the next 10 days. The court said he had reached the parole threshold and called the minister’s decision to reject his application irrational.
The South African Communist Party on Sunday rejected the court’s ruling, saying it was an attack on Hani’s circle of relatives and the organization he led before his death. General Secretary Solly Mapaila told reporters outside the court that the ruling was an injustice to the other South Africans who lost to apartheid.
“The Constitutional Court is a court of democracy, it cannot do the injustice of apartheid. This is an injustice of the highest court,” Mapaida said.
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