Hugh Macmillan - Chris Hani

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by Hugh Macmillan

Chris Hani

Hugh Macmillan

OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS

ATHENS

Ohio University Press, Athens, Ohio 45701

www.ohioswallow.com

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Hugh Macmillan, 2014

First published by Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd in 2014

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First published in North America in 2021 by Ohio University Press

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I recall that it is a communist as such, a communist as communist, whom a Polish emigrant and his accomplices, all the assassins of Chris Hani, put to death a few days ago, April 10th [1993]. The assassins themselves said that they were out to get a communist. They were trying to interrupt negotiations and sabotage an ongoing democratization. This popular hero of the resistance against Apartheid became dangerous and suddenly intolerable, it seems, at the moment in which, having decided to devote himself once again to a minority Communist Party riddled with contradictions, he gave up important responsibilities in the ANC and perhaps any official or even governmental role he might one day have held in a country freed of Apartheid.

JACQUES DERRIDA, SPECTERS OF MARX

CHRIS HANI

Chris Hani was the future of this country.

CARLOS MAS ABALA, CUBAN ENVOY

Rashid Lombard

The assassination of Chris Hani outside his home in Dawn Park, a suburb of Boksburg, near Johannesburg, on 10 April 1993 by a right-wing extremist was a decisive moment in the transition to democracy in South Africa. Nelson Mandelas appeal for calm on prime-time television that evening demonstrated that he alone, and not the incumbent president, F.W. de Klerk, had the authority and stature to lead South Africa at a moment of real crisis. Referring to Hanis assassin and the woman who reported the number of his car, resulting in his arrest, he said: 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.

Speaking at his funeral on 19 April, Joe Slovo said: Chris Hani was killed by those who would like to see an explosion of carnage and race war, a massive spilling of blood, and the end of negotiations. The assassins want to drag us back to a military battlefield. Let us draw them back to a battlefield of our choosing the battlefield of the ballot. They may have the guns. But we have the majority. Chris Hani had a dream of democracy. They killed the man, but they can never kill the dream. And the dream of Chris Hani is about to become a reality.

On the same occasion, Nelson Mandela said: To lose Chris at this time, when a man of his capabilities is so much needed in this country, will not be forgotten. He was a fighter for peace, freedom and justice. Above all, he was a lover of the poor, the workers and the rural masses. He was a true son of the soil.

Hanis death added urgency to the search for solutions. Cyril Ramaphosa recalled that after Hanis death we went in for the kill. At a meeting with De Klerk later in April, Mandela demanded a date for democratic elections. Within a few months a transitional constitution was agreed and democratic elections were held on 27 April 1994, a date which marked the formal end of apartheid.

It is the purpose of this book to explain how it was that a man from a remote corner of the Transkei, who had never held high office, was held in such high esteem by so many people. I suggest that it was his conspicuous displays of both physical and moral courage, taken together with compassion and humanity, which combined to make him a great leader.

Chris Hani was born on 28 June 1942 at what was, from the point of view of the enemies of Nazism-Fascism, the low point of the Second World War. On the day of his birth, Hitlers army of occupation in the Soviet Union launched its advance towards Stalingrad, which was to be the site of its later defeat in the decisive battle of the war. In the previous week 10,000 South African soldiers of the Second Division, British Eighth Army, including more than 1,000 black troops of the Native Military Corps, had surrendered to German forces under General Erwin Rommel at Tobruk. The fall of Singapore to Japan in February 1942 and the subsequent occupation of much of South East Asia were major setbacks. The Japanese invasion of Burma threatened India and its attack on the British naval base at Colombo in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in April threatened the Indian Ocean. Considerations of Native loyalty in the event of a threat to South Africa prompted the suspension of the hated pass laws in the countrys major cities in May 1942 they were to remain in abeyance until 1946.