Janusz Walus, the killer of Communist Party leader Chris Hani, is to again appeal to the courts to be set free, with his lawyers set to argue that like any other murderer he deserves to be paroled.
The appeal will be heard on Tuesday in Pretoria’s North Gauteng High Court, which is expected to be packed with supporters of the Hani family and the Communist Party.
Walus has been in prison for 25 years. With the help of Conservative Party MP Clive Derby-Lewis, who supplied the firearm, he shot Hani dead in the driveway of his Boksburg home in 1993. Walus’s initial death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2000.
It is Walus’s third attempt at parole. In 2013 Justice Minister Michael Masutha turned down his first parole application.
In 2016, the court granted Walus parole, but Masutha appealed, with the Supreme Court of Appeal in August last year ruling that the minister must review Walus’s parole application. Three months later Masutha again denied Walus’s parole bid, saying he had not shown enough remorse for the murder.
Walus’s attorney, Julian Knight, speaking ahead of Tuesday’s proceedings, told Times Select the appeal was to have Walus released on parole and deported back to his home country of Poland.
Knight said the politics of the matter had clouded judgment, “You cannot say that Hani’s life is worth more than others. We have to be careful not to elevate his status to some sort of Christ-like figure."
For more on this story, please visit Times Select.
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