On the evening of April 13 1993 an incredible event took place. The then president of South Africa FW de Klerk handed over the SABC to Nelson Mandela to make a nationally televised broadcast."Tonight I am reaching out to every single South African, black and white, from the very depths of my being. A white man, full of prejudice and hate, came to our country and committed a deed so foul that our whole nation now teeters on the brink of disaster. A white woman, of Afrikaner origin, risked her life so that we may know, and bring to justice, this assassin."Take note of Mandela's choice of words - "a deed so foul that our whole nation now teeters on the brink of disaster".The "deed so foul" was the assassination of Chris Hani, the ANC's charismatic military leader and, alongside Thabo Mbeki, a potential future president."This," said Mandela, "is a watershed moment for all of us. We must not let the men who worship war, and who lust after blood, precipitate actions that will plunge our country into another Angola."Mandela's address and the work of activists around the country managed, against the odds, to pull the country back from the edge of the abyss. Believe me, it was touch and go.Fast forward 23 years and the assassin Janusz Walus is to be released after serving just over two decades in prison. The court ordered that he be released within 14 days.His co-conspirator Clive Derby-Lewis was released in June last year.The release of Derby-Lewis - now 80 years old and suffering from cancer - was itself questionable. But there are no fig-leaves behind which the release of Walus can hide.The real problem with this release is that it severely undermines the criminal justice system's biggest weapon - the deterrent of a full life sentence.It demonstrates that there is, in fact, no such thing as a "life sentence" - the ultimate deterrent in a society that has abandoned the death penalty. It sends a signal that in this nation of endless compromise even the killing of a statesman in an effort to bring the society to its knees will one day be forgiven.Make no mistake - there was no greater crime than that committed by Walus. In April 1993 the nation was one year away from its first democratic election. The armed struggle against apartheid had long been suspended. The parties to the conflict had been in three years of negotiation.The end was in sight and South Africa was finally on the road to democracy. It was a difficult, fragile time when mistrust lingered. The assassination of Hani was a deliberate, planned intervention aimed at the heart of settlement. It sought to incite a re-opening of war, drowning the country in a lake of blood.But then justice was done and the healing began. When Walus was sentenced to life imprisonment it sent a signal to the nation that the ultimate punishment had been meted out for the ultimate crime.The questions about the decision to release him are: What does a hardened criminal have to do to serve out a life sentence? What deed could be more foul?..