Johannesburg - ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe would not comment on Wednesday on reports that Clive Derby-Lewis had been recommended for release on medical parole.
“I'm not sure we should comment on a recommendation,” he told reporters in Johannesburg.
“Otherwise it will sound like we instructing the minister to do X, Y and Z.”
Mantashe said Justice Minister Michael Masutha should be given the space to deal with the recommendation and the African National Congress would wait for his decision.
Derby-Lewis was jailed for his role in the murder, on April 10, 1993, of SA Communist Party general secretary Chris Hani.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission refused him and gunman Janusz Walus amnesty from prosecution. Walus and Derby-Lewis were sentenced to death for Hani’s murder. Their sentences were later commuted to life imprisonment after the abolition of the death penalty.
On Tuesday, Derby-Lewis's wife Gaye said the medical parole board had recommended he be released.
“It has happened four times before and each time it was blocked by the government. I do not know if the minister is going to release him,” she said.
However, Masutha's office said he had not been informed about the parole board's recommendation.
Masutha would announce his decision regarding Derby-Lewis, Ferdi Barnard, and Eugene de Kock, on Friday, his spokesman Mthunzi Mhaga said.
Sapa