Pretoria - Clive Derby-Lewis may be home by next Friday if his doctors permit him to be discharged.
After serving 21 years in prison for his part in the 1993 killing of SACP leader Chris Hani, the terminally ill Derby-Lewis was on Friday granted medical parole by the High Court in Pretoria.
Judge Selby Baqwa’s ruling was met by cheers from two of Derby-Lewis’s friends, who immediately phoned his wife Gaye to tell her the news.
“She is elated and she is on her way to hospital to tell Clive," Salome Oostuizen, one of the women said.
Immediately after hearing the verdict, Limpho Hani, widow of Chris Hani, went to speak to her lawyer.
She has been opposed to Derby-Lewis’s release from the start and has made no secret of how she feels about him.
Limpho refused to accept her husband’s killer's apology or his attempts to meet with her while in the Eugene Marais Hospital in Pretoria.
Judge Baqwa ruled that Derby-Lewis be placed on medical parole with immediate effect, but said his release is subject to the parole board determining his parole conditions. He said these conditions must be set by no later than June 5.
His lawyer, Julian Knight, said his client’s release was subject to the permission of his doctors, who may feel that he needs to be treated further in hospital.
Derby-Lewis has been treated at the hospital on a permanent basis for the last 10 months.
Two doctors in December last year said he was in stage four lung cancer and gave him six months to live.
Derby-Lewis, through his legal team, said he wanted to die in dignity at home with his wife and family.
Judge Baqwa, in ordering the release himself, said if he were to refer the matter back to Justice Minister Michael Masutha for his reconsideration, it would prejudice Derby-Lewis.
“His life is already precariously poised,” the judge said.
He said the 79-year-old was clearly terminally ill and doctors said his prognosis was very poor.
Judge Baqwa found that the process followed by Masutha at the end of January this year, when he refused medical parole, was flawed as Derby-Lewis was not given an opportunity to respond to certain of the statements placed before the minister at the time.
Pretoria News