Johannesburg - The SACP says the denial of the parole request by Janusz Walus, one of the two sentenced killers of Chris Hani, is a welcome move as the killer is yet to tell the whole truth.
The party said this in response to on Monday’s announcement by Justice and Correctional Services Minister Ronald Lamola that Walus will remain in prison for his offence.
Lamola said it was worth noting that parole was a conditional release of a sentenced offender, and not a right, but a privilege. Lamola added that among the factors taken into consideration when rejecting Walus’s request were submissions from Hani’s widow, Limpho Hani, and the SACP.
He also looked at the latest profile of Walus, previous judgments by the Gauteng High Court and the Supreme Court of Appeal, where Walus has taken his fight fo freedom to.
In the end Lamola said it was clear that the political assassination of Hani in 1993 in Boksburg was executed with the intention of creating chaos and mayhem in the country.
“Considering this fact, placing offender Walus on parole would negate the severity that the court sought when sentencing him. With this premise, and balancing both negative and positive factors, the placement on parole of offender Walus is not approved at this stage,” Lamola ruled.
The ruling pleased the SACP, which has always jointly opposed the parole bid along with Hani’s widow.
The SACP said the killing would have succeeded in plunging South Africa into war had it not been of the sterling and resilient intervention by the leadership of the party and its alliance partners in the midst of what nearly became an insurmountable situation. It added Lamola was correct that ‘placing the offender Walus on parole would negate the severity that the court sought when sentencing him’.
It said from the onset Walus made use of every opportunity to not serve his sentence, and that there had still not been full disclosure of the truth.
“The gun Walus used to assassinate Hani was taken from a military armoury. The truth concerning who took it and whose hands it went through until Clive Derby-Lewis and Walus used it in carrying out the assassination has not been disclosed. In the same manner, the truth about those who supplied the silencer that the assassins fitted on the murder weapon has not been disclosed.
“Many questions that can only be answered through full disclosure remain unanswered. Walus remains an unrepentant assassin who must not be granted parole,” the party said.
The SACP’s opposition to parole has earned party leaders enemies in Poland, where Walus originally came from. In December last year senior party leaders received an email from the Communist Party of Poland alerting them about a plot to kill them. Included in the plot were details of a fund-raising function allegedly organised by a right-wing publishing house in Poland, allegedly to benefit Walus.
The SACP’s spokesperson, Dr Alex Mashilo, did not respond to questions about the latest regarding the plot and whether it had been investigated.