Sequel to Long Walk to Freedom - Revision 6 - Chapter 1 Page 8

Chris Hani Some of these courageous fighters are still alive helping to address national problems and they now enjoy the fruits of their labours at last. Although many of them are old, frail and jobless, they become animated when we remind them of their historic achievement. Others have passed on never to return. We acknowledge them all as men and women who have made a decisive contribution to our liberation. But the death of one of them nearly plunged the whole country into a costly bloodbath. The assassination of Chris Hani, one of South Africa’s most popular leaders on 10 April 1993, and who could have fairly easily have risen to the highest in government, almost precipated a calamitous crises. Hani’s popular following was outraged, tens of thousands spontaneously poured on to streets throughout the country. Wide ranges of other South Africans were numbed with shock. As the country teetered, the ANC President was given airtime on SATV to broadcast to the nation, appealing for discipline, and to avoid giving way to provocation. Many commentators on our negotiated transition were later to observe that the effective transfer of power from the National Party of De Klerk to the ANC occurred, not with the elections in April 1994, but in this critical week one year earlier. In 1959 Hani had enrolled at Fort Hare University and attracted the attention of Govan Mbeki, father of Thabo Mbeki. Govan played a formative role in Hani’s development. It was here that Hani encountered Marxist ideas and joined the already illegal and underground South African Communist Party. He always emphasised that his conversion to Marxism also deepened his non-racial perspective. Hani was a bold and forthright young man and