Chris Hani’s legacy is often reduced to debates about his tragic death in April 1993, but his significance goes beyond South Africa’s democratic transition.
Chris Hani, a 50-year-old communist leader and senior member of the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC), was shot dead in the driveway of his garage on April 10, 1993, by Janusz Walus, a Polish immigrant linked to the white Afrikaner far right.
What would our martyrs say if they could see us now?
By Saths Cooper
April 6 – celebrated during the apartheid era from 1952-1994 as Founders Day (
Stigtingsdag) in recognition of Jan van Riebeeck’s landing in Table Bay and the subsequent Dutch settlement in Cape Town – is also the day on which the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) was founded, in 1959, after breaking away from the ANC.
Cynically, the apartheid regime hanged the 22-year-old Solomon Mahlangu at Pretoria Prison on that fateful day in 1979, after he was denied any appeal that focused on his not having killed anyone.
Like our numerous holidays, both official and unofficial, we have not been short of martyrs to remember since the advent of democracy after our historic general election of April 27, 1994.