Chris Hani remembered

April 20, 1994
Issue 

By Norm Dixon

JOHANNESBURG — Scores of thousands of South Africans gathered at rallies, meetings, ceremonies and church services to pay tribute to Chris Hani, the murdered South African Communist Party and ANC leader, on April 10, the anniversary of his brutal assassination.

In Soweto, 40,000 people heard ANC president Nelson Mandela describe Hani as one of South Africa's most important revolutionaries. The election of an ANC government with an overwhelming majority would be the greatest tribute that could be paid to the fallen Communist leader.

The ANC revealed on April 8 that its security people had uncovered a plot to disrupt the gatherings. The plotters planned to assassinate Mandela, Cyril Ramaphosa and Thabo Mbeki, and to attack the homes of ANC members in the Hillbrow-Yeoville area of Johannesburg. Rallies were to be disrupted by IFP members wearing ANC T-shirts. While the immediate plans were foiled, the ANC warned its supporters to remain vigilant.

The ANC marked the anniversary with full-page newspaper advertisements describing Hani as a hero and a fighter for peace. The country's top selling black daily newspaper, the Sowetan, featured the memorials on its front page on April 11.

In the streets of Johannesburg, T-shirts bearing the image of Chris Hani are very common. A woman near the busy taxi rank on the corner of Bree and Sauer Streets has done a brisk trade in framed posters of Hani since at least the day I arrived here. Clearly, despite the assassin's bullets, Chris Hani and everything he stood for live on, for millions of people here.

The SACP's journal, the African Communist, featured the slain leader on its cover. In an editorial, it pointed out that the April 27 election date was the direct result of the "massive outpouring of national grief" that followed Hani's murder.

"But Chris Hani has left behind much, much more", it went on. "Indeed, all of the positive features in the ANC election campaign are part of Chris Hani's legacy ... Individually, he did more than anyone else to hold MK [Umkhonto we Sizwe] together through the extraordinarily difficult 1980s. He did this not through enforcing an iron military discipline, but by talking, listening, answering questions, and answering them honestly ...

"After he became general secretary of the SACP in December 1991, Chris Hani turned our country into a people's forum ...

"For Chris Hani, who led the people because he knew how to listen to them, democracy and socialism were not abstract ideas. They were about basic things — jobs and houses, education and water, the right to a life of dignity for everyone.

"Let us draw inspiration from our fallen comrade. Every communist to the voters! Sekunjalo, Ke Nako, Now is the Time — Vote ANC!"

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