Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Janusz Waluś



Janusz Waluś (born 1953 in Zakopane, Tatra County) is a Polish immigrant to South Africa who assassinated South African Communist Party chairman Chris Hani on April 10, 1993.

The timing of the event, just prior to the first democratic elections in South Africa, caused considerable political tension in the country. Only Nelson Mandela's personal pleas for calm were able to defuse the situation.

The assassination was ultimately unsuccessful at derailing the dismantling of apartheid. For the murder Walus and his accomplice, Conservative MP Clive Derby-Lewis, were sentenced to death, but later commuted to life imprisonment following the abolition of the death penalty in South Africa in 1995.

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