Johannesburg - The SA Communist Party (SACP) would tell former president Thabo Mbeki to his face that he was responsible for the tragic assassination of popular party leader Chris Hani.
That is, if it believed he was involved in Hani’s murder outside his Boksburg home 23 years ago.
In part 3 of the documentary: The Derby-Lewis Disclosure, Clive Derby-Lewis, who succumbed to cancer recently, made reference to the SACP’s and ANC’s alleged involvement in the murder which almost plunged South Africa into a civil war in 1993.
“I was interviewed at one stage in prison by the then Minister of Safety and Security Steve Tshwete and the then Minister of Justice Penwell Maduna, the group came to confront me to ask me whether Mbeki had anything to do with it (assassination) and I said I don’t know Mbeki from a bar of soap. I’ve seen photographs of him in the newspapers but I would never talk to Mbeki because he’s from the ANC and the ANC are my enemies,” Derby-Lewis says in the documentary.
He goes on to say that the ANC and the SACP knew that Mbeki was not involved because both parties had “a report which indicated that actually Chris Hani dispensed with his bodyguards the night before he was killed, because he had an assignment with an air hostess from Air Transkei at the Holiday Inn at the airport”.
Derby-Lewis described himself as someone who worked with truth, and that his whole controversial political career was “crowned by the fact that nobody could catch me out with a lie because I only use facts. And I wasn’t gonna use a lie to get myself out on the pretext that Mbeki was involved”.
In other parts of the documentary, Derby-Lewis, who was jailed for his part in the unresolved assassination, described Hani as a hardline communist who had to be taken out at all costs.
“He was a radical, he was uncontrollable by the ANC higher authorities, he was a man who targeted civilians in preference to military targets.”
On Wednesday, SACP national spokesperson Alex Mashilo said Derby-Lewis was “talking rubbish from his grave”. “If we blamed Thabo Mbeki for Hani’s murder, we would have told him that we blamed him,” he fumed.
Mashilo said they wanted an official inquest into all the circumstances that led to Hani’s murder. “Derby-Lewis should have explained what he meant by Hani being uncontrollable by the ANC leadership. Who were those people?” he said.
Derby-Lewis said in the documentary: “The SACP, what they say you’ve got to examine very careful, because they are blatant liars. This whole question about the conspiracy which they keep clinging to is so obviously a lie that was exposed at one stage by the Pretoria News editor.”
Mbeki's spokesman Mukoni Ratshitanga said: "I find it very strange that you want me to comment on allegations which, by your admission, were denied by Clive Derby Lewis."
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Independent Media