By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The 28th year of assassinated Chris Hani, born Martin Thembisile Hani, is being commemorated by political figures and members of the public alike on Saturday.
President Cyril Ramaphosa laid a wreath at the Thomas Titus Nkob Memorial Park in Ekruhuleni early on Saturday morning as part of the country’s annual ceremony.
Hani was murdered at the age of 51 on 10 April 1993. At the time, he was the general-secretary of the South African Communist Party, and a member of the ANC’s national executive committee.
He was previously chief of staff of the uMkhonto we Sizwe.
Hani met his untimely end when he was gunned down by Polish-born Janusz Walus in the driveway of his home in Boksburg in April 1993, a year before South Africa’s first democratic elections.
Walus was initially sentenced to death but this was later converted to a life sentence after capital punishment was abolished.
Live proceedings are being streamed in the video below:
Video Courtesy of SABC.
Born in 1942 in the Transkei, he was politicised by the sheer poverty that he saw around him in his early life. He joined the ANC’s Youth League at the age of 15, and quickly went on to become a dedicated organiser. As a student radical at the University of Fort Hare (whose alumni include Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Robert Mugabe, Julius Nyerere and Kenneth Kaunda), he was recruited to the South African Communist Party (SACP) by the veteran anti-apartheid leader, Govan Mbeki. In 1962, Hani became a member of the newly-formed Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) – the military wing of the ANC – and it was above all his heroic activities in this organisation over the course of three decades that led to his well-deserved reputation as one of the most important figures in the history of the anti-apartheid struggle.