[Author RW Johnsons latest aberration is a mix of fiction and lazy
research that misrepresents anti-apartheid struggle leaders.]
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ANTI-APARTHEID ACTIVIST CHRIS HANI WASN’T KILLED BY ANC LEADERS  
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Ronnie Kasrils
December 19, 2022
Africa Is a Country
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_ Author RW Johnson's latest aberration is a mix of fiction and lazy
research that misrepresents anti-apartheid struggle leaders. _

Chris Hani's widow, Limpho, far right, at the unveiling of a plaque
to declare his grave a national heritage site. To her left is Jacob
Zuma, President of South Africa at the time., South Africa government
on Flickr CC BY-ND 2.0.

 

It is scarcely surprising in South Africa, where conspiracy theories
thrive, that the parole of Janusz Waluś, the assassin of South
African Communist Party (SACP) general secretary Chris Hani, should
revive questions about the April 1993 murder. It is understandable
that Hani’s family, and the party he led, should have been the first
to question whether a wider conspiracy existed. Conspiracies abound,
but for matters of such national importance, it is vital to do sober
research, investigation, and analysis. Those, who thrust themselves to
the fore with speculative, fanciful, and libelous storytelling, should
at least warrant circumspection. They invariably excite the most basic
of prejudices, and far from clarifying possible leads, muddy the
waters. R. W. “Bill” Johnson’s latest foray on the business news
site BizNews
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one such aberration.

Johnson’s article is a rehash of the theory peddled in his
book _South Africa’s Brave New __World_, published in 2009, which
was correctly described by a _Guardian_ reviewer at the time as “a
record of pretty well every piece of unsubstantiated gossip to have
circulated South Africa’s rumor mills.” Johnson is no stranger to
controversy, having outraged the likes of novelist André Brink,
political scientist Roger Southall, and constitutional law professor
Pierre de Vos, for his reliance on hearsay, private informants,
bizarre stories, and uninformed speculation. Particularly damning was
Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille’s rejection of
Johnson’s claims
[[link removed]] “of
doing things I have never done, or of believing things that have never
entered my head, or of devising strategies that are figments of a
critic’s imagination.”

In fact, Johnson’s intellectual credibility was forfeited a decade
ago in liberal circles when he wrote a racist piece
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the _London Review of Books_ (_LRB_) in which he compared the
horrific xenophobic attacks in South Africa to baboons fighting
rottweilers. According to Ben Fogel, writing
[[link removed]] in _Africa
Is a Country_, Johnson’s crude racist stereotypes provoked
widespread outrage among intellectuals and academics worldwide,
culminating in an open letter condemning the _LRB_ for granting him
a platform.

The core of Johnson’s proposition regarding who was behind Hani’s
murder is that Thabo Mbeki (at the time a member of the African
National Congress [ANC]’s National Executive Committee and one of
its lead negotiators) and his “partner” in crime, a ghoulish Joe
Modise (“who killed people with his bare hands”), should be
considered prime suspects. The reason: Hani was an obstacle to their
ambitions.

He cites Hani’s popularity at the ANC’s Durban conference in July
1991, claiming it was a “disaster for Mbeki,” who was loudly booed
by the delegates. Johnson avoids informing his readers that Hani and
Mbeki easily topped the list for sixty National Executive Committee
positions (serving under six senior office-bearer posts headed by
President Nelson Mandela); that Hani beat Mbeki by a narrow margin
(Hani 1,858, Mbeki 1,824); or that Modise was twelfth with 1,510 — a
popular vote of confidence, too. The bout of booing is fiction.
Johnson claims this took place when Mbeki was tasked with explaining
why the lifting of economic sanctions was desirable. A very tricky
moment. When Mbeki had made the case, the delegates were won over and
applauded. That was a moment of triumph for Mbeki. I was there; and I
can call on countless others to substantiate this.

Certainly, a degree of rivalry existed between contenders for
positions, not unknown in politics, and well-handled by the ANC in
those times. Was there a need to connive at “removing Hani from
society” — to use that apartheid-era term? Not at all. It was Hani
who disqualified himself from becoming ANC president by accepting the
position of General Secretary of the SACP six months later. There was
no way that from such a position he could achieve the presidency of
the country. Hani knew it; we all knew it. (The ANC and SACP were in
an alliance, with the SACP effectively as a junior partner.) That
simple point negates virtually Johnson’s entire thesis as he builds
his mafiosi version of Mbeki and Modise in order to destroy their
reputations.

Johnson cobbles up a thumb-suck of ANC and apartheid intelligence
elements, united in a plot to ensure Hani’s assassination. He
queries how Clive Derby-Lewis, a Conservative Party member of the
white parliament, and Waluś could have known the location of Hani’s
house without assistance. Yet that was no big secret: most of Boksburg
and journalists, among others, were well aware of his address. In
fact, what emerged in their trial was that Arthur Kemp, a reporter for
the _Citizen _newspaper, and close associate of Derby-Lewis’s
wife, Gaye, provided the couple with the home addresses of ten ANC and
SACP leaders, including Hani. She was the key player of the trio. Her
two accomplices failed to obtain amnesty at the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission (TRC) because they protected her. There were
clearly others higher up but no one in the ANC was involved, whatever
the real rivalries and/or groupings in the movement.

Johnson relies heavily on the fact that Hani’s bodyguards had the
day off when Waluś struck, suggesting that such crucial information
could only have emanated from ANC sources; and that this would have
been provided to his killer. Sorry Bill, nobody apart from Hani knew
of his impromptu decision to dismiss his bodyguard so they could be
with their families that Easter weekend. Waluś, carrying out
reconnaissance in the area, chanced upon him jogging home from an
early morning run. It was an opportunistic killing that caught the
Derby-Lewis couple unprepared for a police raid that would follow. The
circumstances also put paid to another of Johnson’s fanciful
suppositions that Chris Hani was in fear for his life and was
demanding that protection be enhanced. Giving his bodyguard time off,
and going for a jog, hardly confirms the reality of that suggestion.

Johnson scoops into his narrative a freak show of shadowy spooks to
build his case. He claims to have ascertained from a variety of ANC
sources that there had been an ANC plot to kill Hani scheduled for ten
days after Waluś struck. No ANC names are provided. Some disreputable
regime-era spooks are cited, now conveniently deceased or disappeared.
One double agent is referred to as a colonel in the ANC’s armed
wing, MK, which in point of fact had no ranking system. There is no
recognition from Johnson’s meandering pen that the world inhabited
by spies is notorious for invented sources. Johnson, who previously
taught at Oxford University, does not ask any questions that go
against his own invented theory. That’s not the methodology of a
reputable journalist, let alone a professional historian, but the spin
of a pompous ass.

He needs to find a henchman for Mbeki, and utilizes the deceased
Modise, whose family have no recourse to sue for libel in South
African litigation. He states that Modise was a one-time boss of the
notorious Spoilers gang that plagued Alexandra township in the 1950s.
Modise was not from Alexandra. He was from Sophiatown and was employed
as a Putco bus driver, joining the ANC and active in the resistance to
enforced removals of which he and his newly wedded wife were victims,
being forcibly removed to Dube, in today’s Soweto. In 1956 (at only
twenty-seven years of age), he was on trial with Mandela and 156
treason trialists. Hardly time to run a gang in Alexandra.

Johnson claims Modise lived in comfort in Lusaka, in an upmarket
suburb. I stayed with him at times, in the working-class township of
Kabwata, where homes were small and modest. I slept on the couch in a
two-bedroomed house, occupied by his family. If the place was shared
with a well-known cocaine dealer as claimed by Johnson, he must have
been invisible. Diamond and drug running, bank robberies, arms sales
to Unita (the Angolan movement that collaborated with apartheid South
Africa and was a US proxy) — all allegations conjured up by Johnson,
as fanciful as the cocaine dealer. Actually, these were stories
manufactured by the apartheid security police, and spread by their
agents, who infiltrated the ANC in exile. The growing Modise family
did move to Avondale, a better-off Lusaka suburb, as Johnson says, but
they lived in backyard quarters of a main house.

Johnson further claims Modise was responsible for the brutal torture
of MK dissidents in Angola. That’s not true either. Security was the
responsibility of the ANC’s security department, and not MK. They
had their hands full uncovering highly dangerous agents; and there
were abuses later admitted to by the ANC, within the context of
apartheid security forces’ murderous attacks on opponents inside and
outside South Africa. It was Modise who raised the issue in the
ANC’s National Executive Committee, supported by Joe Slovo, Chris
Hani, Pallo Jordan, Modise’s wife, Jackie (MK chief of
communications), and myself. We were also aggrieved at the removal of
some MK commanders from the forward areas by the security organ for
questioning, which we believed was often without sufficient cause.

The issue of MK’s Natal regional commander, Thami Zulu (real name
Muziwakhe Ngwenya), is a case in point. Johnson claims that Zulu
“annoyed” Modise and for that reason his fate was sealed. (Zulu
died in Lusaka in 1989, allegedly poisoned.) In fact, it was Modise,
with Hani, who objected to Zulu’s detention and demanded his
release. It is well known that Jacob Zuma, who headed the ANC’s
counterintelligence directorate at the time, was the source of
Zulu’s lengthy incarceration.

Johnson doesn’t fail to latch on to the Memorandum of 1969 (the
so-called Hani Memorandum), a document sharply critical of the ANC
leadership, signed by seven cadres who participated in the 1967–68
incursions into then Rhodesia. Many of its strategic recommendations
were adopted at the critical Morogoro Conference of 1969, which saw
the relegation of a number of leaders, but not Modise. Rumors surfaced
over the years that Modise had pressed for the execution of the
authors of the memorandum, which Johnson seizes upon as gospel. Modise
demanded no such measure. As MK commander he was the obvious target
for the accusations of disgruntled and demotivated elements, agents
among them, through difficult years of exile.

In the course of time, Modise and Hani worked closely together in an
amicable relationship, sharing many dangers together, including
fighting Unita in Angola, but primarily developing the armed struggle
in South Africa. I saw this at close quarters in the MK high command
through the very challenging 1980s, as did many others.

Johnson, a relentless character assassin, approaches his victim with
gusto, claiming: “When I questioned former members of the Security
Police working for the ANC government, they all confirmed that Modise
had been a police informant under apartheid.” What a sweeping,
clueless pronouncement. No genuine security professionals ever reveal
sources, even after such a person’s death. That’s an iron rule.
And the apartheid-era service has been pretty tight-lipped. Why open
up to someone like Johnson?

Johnson rises to the occasion in dealing with what he regards as
Modise’s pressing ambition: securing the minister of defense
portfolio and making a fortune through arms deals. To achieve that,
Modise had to deal with Hani. Yet, once Hani became SACP leader in
1991, he forfeited any possibility of becoming ANC president or
minister of defense. Thus, Johnson’s case falls apart. Did Modise
acquire immense wealth from arms procurement, as Johnson claims in the
second part of his article? No evidence of gain from corrupt practice
has transpired from several commissions of enquiry, or as resolutely
as investigative journalists have sought to prove. Johnson’s
reference to secret bank accounts abroad is a shot in the dark, just
like his phantom sources. When he does name a real person, striving to
prove nepotistic appointments, he is prone to comical error,
reflecting proclivity for lazy research or simply failure to carry out
the necessary checks. For example, Lambert Moloi, whom he claims was
Modise’s brother-in-law, had no such connection. The Modise family
have tirelessly pointed this out to the media and the various
commissions of enquiry. In fact, the main asset left by Modise to his
family is a middle-class house in Centurion, Pretoria, built in 1997,
worth about R1.5 million at the time — not implausible for a
government minister and working wife to have purchased. There is
simply no Modise fortune. His wife, Jacqueline, aged eighty, only
recently retired after years of running a small, struggling business.

Johnson’s claim that Modise, as a minister, was only interested in
defense equipment procurement reflects his ignorance. From the get-go
in 1994, Modise was deeply involved in the formidable task of
transforming the new defense force, integrating the former adversarial
forces, demobilizing those who were not seeking a military career,
overseeing new legislation, including the White Paper that Johnson
incorrectly claims he never read, establishing a civilian secretariat
to offset the previous hegemony of military command, and steering an
unprecedented, consultative defense review through parliament to the
unanimous acceptance of all parties at the time. Its finalization, and
signing, took place after his death. To date, no corruption from the
executive arm of state has come to light. The Zuma-Thales corruption
case involves the private sector. Zuma is on trial, not Mbeki or
Modise, because despite all of Johnson’s fancy theories, there is
nothing that can possibly link these two long serving cadres of the
struggle to massive corruption and the foul murder of Chris Hani.

One can go on and on showing the implausibility of Johnson’s
vindictive suppositions. They amount to character assassination. Any
journal worth its salt should show greater responsibility, in giving
free rein to such malicious nonsense.

_RONNIE KASRILS is a South African politician, Marxist revolutionary,
guerrilla and military commander. He was a founding member of uMkhonto
we Sizwe, Minister for Intelligence Services from 27 April 2004 to 25
September 2008. He was a member of the National Executive Committee
(NEC) of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1987 to 2007 as well
as a member of the Central Committee of the South African Communist
Party (SACP) from December 1986 to 2007. _

_AFRICA IS A COUNTRY  [[link removed]]is a site of
opinion, analysis, and new writing on and from the African left. It
was founded by Sean Jacobs [[link removed]] in 2009.
Unless otherwise noted, all the content on Africa Is a Country is
published under a Creative Commons
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* Chris Hani
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* African National Congress
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* Umkhonto we Sizwe
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* South Africa
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* media
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* apartheid
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* Journalism
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* South African Communist Party
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