Brothers in War and Peace by Dennis Cruywagen
Author:Dennis Cruywagen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781770226012
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
Published: 2014-08-06T16:00:00+00:00
8
The general answers the call
ON EASTER SATURDAY, 10 April 1993, the hand of white right-wing terrorism reached into the East Rand suburb of Boksburg. Chris Hani, the general secretary of the South African Communist Party and arguably the most popular and revered black leader in South Africa after Mandela, pulled up at his Dawn Park home after driving to a café to get a newspaper and got out of his car. Parked across the street, with a view of his driveway, was a red Ford Laser. A man armed with a nine-millimetre Z88 army-issue pistol leant out of the window and fired two shots into the struggle hero. Hani staggered against his garage door and fell to the ground. The shooter got out of his vehicle, walked across the street and fired two more rounds into Hani’s body. He then got back into his car and drove away.1
It would have been the perfect assassination and the perfect get-away had it not been for Hani’s Afrikaans neighbour, Retha Harmse, who had returned from her shopping trip upon realising that she had left her purse at home.
She did not witness the shooting, but she heard the shots and saw the Laser drive off. She noted the registration number, PBX231T, committed it to memory and ran into her house, shouting to her husband as she did so. She then called the police flying squad.
About a quarter of an hour later, police pulled over the Laser. The driver was a thirty-eight-year-old Polish immigrant, Janusz Walus, who had associations with the far right. The murder weapon was inside the vehicle. Following an interrogation, Clive Derby-Lewis, a leading member of the Conservative Party, and his wife Gaye were also arrested.
Fear took hold of South Africa that day, as civil war, the desired outcome of the assassination, now seemed a real possibility. An intervention was urgently needed to maintain balance, but it could not come from De Klerk. That night, Nelson Mandela and not the president spoke to the nation in a televised address. In a brave show and for the sake of peace, Mandela hid his true feelings, his pain, and remained calm as he talked about the man who had been like a son to him.2
The leader of the ANC knew that varying demands were being projected onto him. The black majority needed him to speak calmly and compassionately, and to keep them focused on the bigger goal: their freedom. The white minority needed assurance that vengeance was not in his heart. And the international community needed to see if he could bridge the divide separating liberation leaders from statesmen.
Mandela met all demands that night. He used the moment to grow from leader of the ANC to leader of South Africa. His message was clear: change was inevitable; all that was needed to cement it were elections; violence was what the killers wanted; but peace was his way. That night a new president was born.
Mandela reminded the nation that it was an immigrant who had
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