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CHRIS HANI’S MURDER ROBBED SOUTH AFRICA OF A GREAT LEADER  
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Hugh Macmillan
December 7, 2025
Jacobin
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_ Chris Hani, the South African Communist who led the ANC’s
military wing, was assassinated in April 1993 before seeing the
liberation he had fought for. The loss of Hani and his socialist
perspective was a major blow to the new South Africa. _

Chris Hani remained loyal to socialist ideals when many of his
comrades were preparing to renounce them, including future presidents
Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. His assassination in 1993 was a grievous
loss to post-apartheid South Africa., Walter Dhladhla / AFP via Getty
Images

 

The assassination of Chris Hani
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was a decisive moment in South Africa’s transition to democracy.
Nelson Mandela used this tragic event to pressure President F. W. De
Klerk to conclude negotiations and announce a date for the elections
that would bring the African National Congress (ANC) to power the
following year, marking the formal end of apartheid.

Hani was born in 1942, the same year as two of Mandela’s successors
as president, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. While Mbeki and Zuma both
remain alive and politically active today, more than thirty years
later, Hani did not live long enough to hold office in the new South
Africa. He is nevertheless remembered today as one of the greatest of
South Africans.

He played a leading role in three anti-apartheid organizations: the
ANC, the South African Communist Party (SACP), and the armed wing that
the ANC and SACP formed together in the 1960s, uMkhonto weSizwe
(usually known as MK). By discussing in more detail his role in these
organizations, we can show why his death was such a great loss to the
new South Africa.

Background and Education

Hani was born in the Transkei, now the Eastern Cape. He attended
Catholic primary schools in the Transkei and did his matriculation
exams at Lovedale at the early age of sixteen before moving on to the
University College of Fort Hare. He graduated at nineteen, having
taken courses in Latin and English literature, as well as the Greek
classics in English. His parents discouraged him from seeking
ordination as a Catholic priest, but he valued his classical
education.

The assassination of Chris Hani in April 1993 was a decisive moment in
South Africa’s transition to democracy.

He had an inherited interest in the ANC as his father, Gilbert, a
labor migrant who became a small trader in Cape Town, was an active
member. His uncle, Milton Hani, was also an active member of the
Communist Party of South Africa, which was the SACP’s legal
predecessor before the authorities banned it in 1950. His own
political education began at school at Lovedale where he was drawn
firstly toward the Sons of Young Africa, the youth wing of the
Trotskyist Non-European Unity Movement, and then to the ANC Youth
League.

It was at Fort Hare that Hani joined a Marxist study group under the
influence of Govan Mbeki, who was a leader of both the ANC and the
SACP. South Africa’s Communists had reconstituted their party in
1953 as a clandestine organization after the government ban; the ANC
was also outlawed in 1960. Hani’s study group read the _Communist
Manifesto_ and Emile Burns’s _What is Marxism?_, and he enlisted in
an underground cell of the SACP during his time in Fort Hare.

After graduation in 1961, Hani joined his father in Cape Town and
became an articled clerk in a firm of attorneys. He soon became a
member of MK and did elementary military training. In 1963, he moved
north to Johannesburg and then through Bechuanaland (now Botswana) and
Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) to Tanganyika (now Tanzania).

From there, he traveled with other activists to the Soviet Union,
where he spent a year, undergoing military training and political
education in Moscow. He traveled widely in the USSR and especially
valued his exposure to ballet, opera, and Russian literature.

The Wankie Campaign

In 1965, Hani returned to newly independent Zambia, where he became
one of a group of ANC and MK leaders who were planning a return to
South Africa. When it became clear in 1966 that newly independent
Botswana would not provide a transit route for freedom fighters to
South Africa, the ANC leadership resolved to form an alliance with the
Zimbabwean African Political Union, seeking to open a route through
Rhodesia, which was ruled by the white-settler dictatorship of Ian
Smith.

A group of seventy-nine men, mainly MK members, crossed the Zambezi
river near Livingstone on July 31, 1967, in what came to be known as
the Wankie Campaign. Hani was one of the leaders of a group who first
clashed with Rhodesian forces three weeks after crossing the Zambezi.

In 1965, Hani returned to newly independent Zambia, where he became
one of a group of ANC leaders who were planning a return to South
Africa.

In the wake of another clash, he led a group of about twenty men who
took refuge in Botswana where they surrendered to the local
paramilitary police. The authorities charged them with having entered
Botswana carrying weapons of war and they received two-year prison
sentences, although they were released after one year.

Hani returned to Zambia with others in September 1968. Although the
members of what was called the Luthuli Detachment had failed in their
military objectives, they had shown great bravery and sustained heavy
losses. Hani was later certain that the campaign was a good example of
armed propaganda and helped to inspire resistance within South Africa,
including the Black Consciousness Movement, which had its origins in
the late 1960s.

The Hani Memorandum

Hani’s role in the Wankie Campaign earned him a reputation for
physical courage. It was his role in the campaign’s aftermath that
also gave him a reputation for moral courage. He became the lead
signatory, one of seven, of a three-thousand-word document that was
written in January 1969 and became known as the “Hani Memorandum.”
The opening sentence stated: “The ANC in Exile is in deep crisis as
a result of which a rot has set in.”

Although the document did not attack the ANC president Oliver Tambo
personally, this was a devastating critique of the Congress leadership
as a whole and of its failure to recognize the “heroes and
martyrs” of the Wankie Campaign and the subsequent, equally
unsuccessful Sipolilo Campaign. The main targets of the memorandum
were Joe Modise, MK’s commander-in-chief, and Duma Nokwe, ANC
secretary-general and head of the security department. The authors saw
the security department as being more closely focused on detecting
subversion among the membership than on defending the organization
against external attack.

Hani’s role in the Wankie Campaign earned him a reputation for
physical courage.

The memorandum concluded with a demand for a conference to discuss the
issues it raised. Modise and Nokwe responded with fury. When the
signatories refused to attend a tribunal that they considered to be
stacked against them, they were first suspended and then expelled from
the ANC. They were even threatened with execution, and Hani believed
that his life was in danger. He withdrew for a while to the Zambian
Copperbelt where he stayed with expatriate friends.

However, Tambo agreed to hold the conference that the memorandum
demanded, which took place in the Tanzanian city of Morogoro in April
1969. While Hani and the other signatories were unable to attend as
they were no longer ANC members, the conference did recommend their
reinstatement, which took effect in June. Modise was demoted, though
he remained commander of MK, and Nokwe was replaced as
secretary-general and head of security.

Among the important policy decisions of the conference were the formal
opening of membership of the ANC and its national executive to white,
colored, and Indian members. This brought the Congress in line with
the practice of MK and signified the end of the multiracial Congress
Alliance and a step towards non-racialism. The conference also adopted
a new “Strategy and Tactics” document, which, in response to the
Memorandum, specifically rejected “militarism” and emphasized the
primacy of political struggle.

Political Work From Lesotho

While Hani’s reinstatement did not occur without controversy, he was
rapidly promoted to positions of leadership. He became the SACP’s
deputy-general-secretary in 1972, and was elected to the ANC’s
National Executive Committee (NEC) in 1974, along with Thabo Mbeki. He
began to play a diplomatic role and traveled to Scandinavia in
1972–73, establishing close links with Sweden.

In September 1974, he became the first serving member of the NEC to
enter South Africa for underground work, although he was unable to
stay long. He moved on to Lesotho, a country where he had connections
through Limpho Sekamane, who he had recently married, and through his
father, Gilbert. Hani Sr had been running a café in Mafeteng with his
partner, Elizabeth Mafikeng, a trade unionist, since 1963.

Hani’s stay in Lesotho became increasingly dangerous, and there were
attempts on his life in 1981 and 1982.

Hani was to remain based in Lesotho until 1982. Although he carried
out some recruiting for MK, he did very little military work during
this time. Most of his activity involved political liaisons with
established and newly emerging trade unions; with Black Consciousness
organizations, such as the Port Elizabeth Black Civic Organization;
and with the opposition to the Bantustan government in the Transkei.
Hani and the Lesotho branch of the ANC were putting into practice the
Morogoro Conference’s resolution about the primacy of political
work.

His stay in Lesotho became increasingly dangerous, and there were
attempts on his life in 1981 and 1982. The ANC eventually withdrew
Hani from the country at the request of its government in 1982. His
wife and family were lucky to escape death in December of that year
when there was a massive South African raid on Lesotho’s capital,
Maseru, which killed many ANC members and local citizens.

Military Work and Negotiations

In 1983, Hani was appointed deputy commander and political commissar
of MK, and he became the organization’s chief of staff in 1987. In
these capacities, he traveled frequently between Angola, Zambia, and
Mozambique. However, the Nkomati Accord of March 1984 between the
Mozambican government and the apartheid regime meant that he was
henceforth excluded from the country, and MK later had to withdraw
from its Angolan camps to Uganda in 1988.

In the early months of 1984, Hani had to contend with two major
mutinies in the Angolan camps, which were prompted by poor living
conditions; MK casualties in fighting with UNITA, which was engaged in
a civil war with the Angolan government; and the frustration of cadres
who saw no prospect of getting into action in South Africa. While Hani
could not escape some responsibility for the crises in Angola, he and
Joe Slovo had an image of being on the side of the troops, in contrast
with Joe Modise, the MK commander, and the hated security apparatus.

MK activity in South Africa reached a peak in 1988 and then declined
as pressure on its bases in the frontline states increased.

His continuing popularity was demonstrated when he came top of the
poll in the NEC elections at the Kabwe Consultative Conference in
1985. MK activity in South Africa reached a peak in 1988 and then
declined as pressure on its bases in the frontline states increased.

In 1985, the movement toward a negotiated settlement began after the
meeting of ANC leaders with the Anglo-American delegation of South
African businessmen and journalists, as guests of Zambian President
Kenneth Kaunda, in the Luangwa National Park. Hani represented MK and
made only one intervention in the discussions, saying that while the
ANC was accused of violence, it was the government of President P. W.
Botha that was the truly violent actor.

In the years leading up to the ANC’s unbanning and the release of
Mandela in February 1990, and during the subsequent period of
negotiations, observers generally portrayed Hani as a hard-line figure
in contrast with Thabo Mbeki, the conciliator. Although he was
sometimes involved in the unfolding process — for example, through
participating in the CODESA talks in December 1991 — he did not play
a major role overall. He and Slovo acted with Cyril Ramaphosa, the ANC
secretary-general, to remove Mbeki and Jacob Zuma from leadership of
the talks in August 1991 on the grounds that they were moving too
slowly.

In December 1991, Hani stepped down as MK chief of staff and as a
member of the ANC’s National Working Committee, taking over from
Slovo as general secretary — in other words, leader — of the SACP.
This came at a moment when the Soviet Union was disintegrating, and
half the members of the SACP’s central committee (including Mbeki
and Zuma) had resigned from the party, not wishing to be identified as
communists. Yet Hani, with characteristic courage, took on the
leadership role.

Crisis of Socialism

He had always been politically close to Slovo, and the two men had in
general welcomed the ascension of Mikhail Gorbachev and his reform
agenda of _glasnost _and _perestroika_. Hani agreed with the thrust of
Slovo’s pamphlet
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_Has Socialism Failed?, _published in January 1990, in which he argued
that Soviet communism was a distortion of socialist ideals, but that
its failure did not discredit those ideals as such.

Hani did not believe that the crisis of international socialism
represented the ‘end of history.’

In an interview conducted shortly before his death, Hani said that
while he and his comrades might have been blind not to see the lack of
democracy in the Soviet Union, socialism was no more invalidated by
the bad things done in its name than Christianity had been. He did not
believe that the crisis of international socialism represented the
“end of history.”

Hani was a progressive on many issues, including his support for
feminism, his response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and his views on
rural feudalism and the role of chiefs. He saw the function of the
SACP as the promotion of “democratic socialism” within the ANC and
of the “national democratic revolution” in South Africa as a
whole.

There was room in this framework for “born-again socialists and
born-again communists,” committed to pluralism and a multiparty
system. Hani and his co-thinkers did not wish to impose socialism, and
they rejected concepts such as that of the “dictatorship of the
proletariat.” He had personally come to accept that there was a role
for the market in economic life, but he argued that “the great
majority of South Africa’s people are not even _in_ the market.”

As Hani acknowledged, he was in the unusual position of heading a
communist party that was growing rapidly at a time when most communist
parties in the rest of the world were in decline. However, he rejected
the suggestion of his friend Wolfie Kodesh that he might want to lead
the SACP into an oppositional stance toward the ANC.

It is not entirely clear why he decided, not long before his death,
that he would not participate in the projected government of national
unity, which would bring together the ANC and the outgoing nationalist
party for a period of up to five years. It is possible that he had
doubts about the viability of the government of national unity, which
ultimately lasted less than two years after being established a year
after his assassination.

A Lost Leader

Hani had always been more skeptical about the negotiating process than
his rival Thabo Mbeki, and he took a harder line as it unfolded. He
appears to have believed that it was important for him, as the
SACP’s leader, to assume an independent and critical role in the
transitional phase: “The perks of a new government are not really
appealing to me . . . the real problems of the country are not whether
one is in cabinet, or a key minister, but what we do for social
upliftment of the working masses of our people.”

There are still unresolved questions about Hani’s murder in 1993.
Were the two men found guilty of his assassination, Janusz Waluś and
Clive Derby-Lewis, acting independently, or were they acting, as seems
likely, as agents of the apartheid state? We do not know for sure.

It is also impossible to say what the wider political consequences of
his death proved to be. Hani was the ANC’s most popular and highly
respected leader, receiving 95 percent of the vote in the NEC
elections at the first ANC conference held inside the country in July
1991.

Would he, and not Mbeki, have succeeded Nelson Mandela as president of
South Africa in 1999, and would that have affected the course of South
African history? All that we can say for sure is that his death
represented an incalculable loss to South Africa.

HUGH MACMILLAN is a prominent South African historian, researcher, and
author known for his extensive work on Southern African history,
particularly the African National Congress (ANC) in exile, business
history (like Susman Brothers & Wulfsohn), and biographies of key
figures (Chris Hani, Oliver Tambo). He taught at universities in
Zambia, Swaziland, and South Africa before becoming a Research
Associate at Oxford University's African Studies Centre and Senior
Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg. 

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