HANI, CHRIS

Chris Hani (June 28, 1942-April 10, 1993), a commander of the African National Congress’s (ANC) guerrilla lighting force Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), a member of the ANC’s National Executive and ultimately a leading member of the South African Communist Party, was murdered in 1993 at a time when he was considered one of the leading contenders to receive the mantle of the ANC’s leadership from the shoulders of Nelson Mandela.

PHOTO CAPTION: Chris Hani. SOURCE: nelsonmandela.org

Hani was born at Cofimvaba in the Transkei in 1942, the place from which his father moved out as a migrant worker. Hani completed his education up to Standard 6 at a Catholic mission, and considered becoming a Catholic priest, but dropped the idea knowing that his father would never accept that calling for his son.

Showing academic promise, Hani completed his studies at Lovedale High School. He then moved on to University studies completing a degree in English and Classics at the University of Fort Hare at the age of nineteen. Hani had been recruited as an ANC member while in high school, and his political education was furthered in the charged atmosphere of Fort Hare in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Hani was an avid reader of the leftist press, and was particularly attracted by the news there of the international workers’ movement. He would later reflect that his background was responsible for his particular interest in working-class politics.

Finishing his degree at Fort Hare, Hani moved to Cape Town, where he took charge of the ANC’s underground in the Western Cape, and became acquainted with veteran communists Jack and Ray Simons. Arrested in 1962 for distributing illegal leaflets, Hani fled the country while on bail after being called out by Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK). He was sent to Moscow for training. In 1966 or 1967, Hani found himself in the centre of a hurricane, when he communicated the grievances of his colleague soldiers in Umkhonto to the ANC leadership. This agitation is believed to have been responsible for moving the ANC to put MK cadres into action in what was known as the Wankie campaign. MK soldiers known as the Lutuli Brigade were to infiltrate into Rhodesia, working in concert with the African nationalist forces of Rhodesia’s ZAPU, ultimately to re-infiltrate South Africa. Hani was a political commissar in this largely failed campaign.

Managing to survive the campaign, and after a short stint in a Botswana jail, Hani made his way back to an MK camp. Hani then was sent to Lesotho where he organised MK’s underground structure there. In 1974 he was elected to the ANC’s National Executive. In 1981 he was elected a member of the South African Communist Party’s Politburo. In 1982 he was given the post of Political Commissar of Umkhonto we Size. Hani’s capital within MK rose as a result of his role in MK’s campaign against UNITA inside Angola. Hani was not only regarded as a stalwart soldier and a ‘man of the people,’ but he was largely single-handedly responsible for quelling a major mutiny among ANC cadres in Angola following that campaign. In 1987 Hani was named Army Chief of Staff, second only to Commander Joe Modise, with whom Hani shared a bitter rivalry.

Hani’s maintenance of high positions in the core liberation alliance affiliates, the ANC, its military wing Umkhonto we Sizwe and the South African Communist Party made him a highly influential man and a target for those opposed to liberation. Colleagues of Hani noted that as a classical scholar he was fond of quoting Shakespeare, particularly Hamlet, in the years before his death. Following the legalisation of the ANC, MK and the Communist Party, Hani returned to South Africa, moving into the formerly strictly white and conservative neighbourhood of Boksburg. Three weeks prior to his assassination, Hani, in words eerily foreshadowing his death, asked: “What right do I have to hold back, to rest, to preserve my health, to have time with my family, when there are other people who are no longer alive when they have sacrificed what is precious, namely life itself?” Hani was assassinated by a Polish immigrant outside his Boksburg home on 10 April 1993. One of his white neighbours, Retha Harmse, was credited with noting the license plate number of the assassin’s car which led to his almost immediate capture and arrest.

Hani’s death is considered in many circles to have robbed the ANC and SACP of a leading light, one of the most intelligent and capable younger generation members produced during the liberation period. If Hani’s reputation is somewhat tainted by the revelations surrounding abuses, including torture, in the ANC’s own exile camps, his reputation will undoubtedly be preserved particularly among the young urban Africans of South Africa, for whom Hani was a figure of near mythic proportions.

JOSHUA LAZERSON