Dan Snow's History Hit - The Assassination that Ended South African Apartheid

Episode Date: April 9, 2023

The assassination of Chris Hani was a pivotal moment in the dismantling of South African apartheid. On the 10th of April, 1993, he was shot dead as he returned to his home in a quiet suburb of Johannesburg. Negotiations between Nelson Mandela's party and the ruling apartheid government had stalled, and the country was as close as it had ever been to civil war. The murder of Nelson Mandela's heir apparent forced the negotiators back to the table, where they would finally set a date for South Africa's first democratic election. But who exactly was Chris Hani? And why was his death such an incendiary event? Dan is joined by Justice Malala, a South African political commentator and author of the book The Plot to Save South Africa, to give us his account of this crucial figure in South African history.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!Download the History Hit app from the Google Play store.Download the History Hit app from the Apple Store.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History here. 30 years ago, on the 10th of April 1993, I remember watching my TV, I remember watching the evening news, and we heard a tragic story from South Africa in which one of the leading anti-apartheid figures, Nelson Mandela's heir apparent, Chris Harney, was assassinated by a Polish immigrant, a radicalised, conservative South African. He was shot at extremely close range and died instantly. Like that other great political assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, it almost threw an entire region of the world into war. Everybody involved, from de Klerk to Mandela to other people, said that that's as close as South Africa got to civil

war. There was enormous unrest and anger, frustration among the black community and among the white South Africans. There was a danger that could have provoked a reaction, that could have seen slow moves towards a multiracial democracy stopped. It came very close to all-out violence. One of the reasons it didn't was because of the remarkable leadership of Nelson Mandela and, to a certain extent, F.W. de Klerk, the white president of South Africa. Mandela gave one of his finest speeches on television that night. He said he's reaching out to every single South African,

black and white, from the very depths of my being. He talked about the cold-blooded murder of Chris Harney, but he managed to use words that portrayed it not as a racial killing, but as an act of violence designed to frustrate the march towards democracy, freedom and dignity for all South Africans. It was an amazing period of history. And here to tell us all about it is a historian, Justice Malala. He talked to me from Cape Town.

He's gone back through the archives, looked at much of the detail. Much of the archives, by the way, have been destroyed. He was able to piece together the story of what happened that tumultuous week. Here we go, folks. The story of the assassination of Chris Harney. T-minus 10. Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower.

Justice, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me. Take us all back. I'm old enough to remember this so clearly, but take us back. Where were we in the journey towards freedom in South Africa in April 1993? How long had Nelson Mandela been out of prison, for example? April 1993. How long had Nelson Mandela been out of prison, for example? Then Mandela had been out of prison for three years. And Mandela comes out of jail. It's February 1990. It's a big thing for many South Africans, for people across the world, people like you who, you know, wanted South Africa to change to become a better citizen of the world. And so he comes out and he says at his first speech, given not far from where I am in Cape Town, that F.W. de Klerk, the president of South Africa at the time, is a man of integrity, is someone he can work with in the same breath. F.W. de Klerk says,

you know, this is a man I can do business with. So it starts off very nicely. It looks like this is real cooperation. But the negotiations don't take off for the first year, 1990, the second year, 91, 92. So by 1993, the relationship between the two men had frosted over. It was very, very chilly. Mandela accused de Klerk of allowing political violence to go on. De Klerk said Mandela is asking violence, in attacks on communities and so forth. You went to sleep scared about what the night would hold and what the next day's reports would look like. And let's talk about Chris Harney. Who was he and why was he important?

Chris Harney was young by many leaders' age at that point. He was 50 years old. Mandela, remember, was over 70. He'd been in jail for 27 years. Chris Harney was a guy who was born from a very poor family in the Eastern Cape, had gone to the local Catholic school, got a scholarship to go to university, studied Latin, English, history, law. And by age 23, he realized that something's not right in this state. is not right in this state. This apartheid is a real affront to him, to many black South Africans, to many right-thinking white South Africans. And he joined up with the ANC, went off to fight with the ANC against apartheid. By then, the ANC was banned from operating inside South Africa. was banned from operating inside South Africa. This is in the 1960s. So he joined the ANC army, fought one battle against what was then Rhodesian forces with the intention of coming back into South Africa, got arrested, spent about two years in prison, then went back and joined the ANC in exile in Zambia and rose up in the organization, became the ANC's chief of staff of the ANC in exile in Zambia, and rose up in the organization,

became the ANC's chief of staff of the ANC's army, Umkonto Esiso, called Spear of the Nation. He became a member of the ANC's National Executive Committee. He was much loved by young people because he told it as it is. He was very uncompromising, where many young people saw Mandela as sort of giving in to the apartheid government and its own positions. He was, no, we're not going that way. We're prepared to fight for freedom. Why do we have to explain our humanity to many,

many people? He was a very charming man at the first meeting between the ANC and the apartheid government in March 1990. The guys on the apartheid side were these Oxford-educated philosophers, many of them. They'd studied Greek and Latin and so forth and so forth. Before he went and met them, he kind of read up their CVs, knew who they were. And to them, he was this ogre, this terrorist, as they called him, this person who wanted to destroy the South African state, Afrikanerdom and so forth. So he goes there and he makes a beeline for one of F.W. de Klerk's deputies, ministers. He knows that this guy did a PhD with Oxford University, one of the colleges on Sophocles. So he goes up to him

and engages him about this. This is the most right-wing, most hardcore individual in de Klerk's cabinet and delegation. And the minute Trishani finishes with him, the guy is just patting his hands. He goes to de Klerk and says, did you know what that communist terrorist has been talking to me about? He's amazing. He spoke to me about this and this and this. And he was totally taken up by him. You know, he was that kind of guy. When he first met Archbishop Desmond Tutu, because Tutu was anti-communist. So he goes up to him and says, hey, you know, before we start, can we sing this song? I haven't sung this hymn, I haven't sung since 1963. And he breaks into this, an old, old South African hymn

that was composed by a black South African in the 1880s. And he breaks into this song and he knows that Tutu loves this hymn. And Tutu just, wow. And they became, you know, Tutu gave the eulogy at Hani's funeral. And that was part of the charm that he had. By 1993, surveys had been done in South Africa. He was the most popular black leader after Nelson Mandela. So that's who he was. He was painted by the media as being this radical and so forth. But I'll tell you now, and I write this in my book, in the months before Shri Shani's assassination, he'd been talking peace on virtually every single platform he had.

He spoke about, this is how we make peace. Let's work on this. This is how we can do it, and so forth and so forth. And how was he killed? So Chris Haney was, as I explained, the head of the ANC army, a member of the ANC's leadership, one of the negotiators for democracy in the ongoing peace talks at the time. On the weekend of 10 April 1993, unlike many others, so Nelson Mandela went off to his home in the Transkei, a very rural part of South Africa. Someone like F.W. de Klerk, who was the president at the time, went off to his family farm in the desert in the Karoo. You know, South Africans are a bit like Americans in the sense Easter weekend is like Thanksgiving in the U.S. People in the cities just scupper and go off. It's very much family time. So that was the weekend in which virtually Johannesburg was emptied out and the other urban

centers and people went off to spend time with family. Chris Harnis chose not to do that. He had three bodyguards. He gave them an instruction that, look, I'm just going to be at home despite the danger and all that. I'm giving you the weekend off to go home and do what South Africans do, and that's spend time with family. When this happened, he was at home with his 13-year-old daughter. And on the Saturday, the 10th of April, he got up in the morning. He was very much like Mandela. He went off to buy newspapers.

That was almost like a ritual among many of the ANC's leaders. There were news junkies, many of them. So he goes off and buys newspapers, comes back to his home. But he'd been stopped by a man who had been keeping him under surveillance for weeks and perhaps even months. This man had gotten up in the morning very early, made his way to Chris Haney's home, saw him leave to go and get his newspapers, followed him to the local shopping center, saw him buy the newspapers and knew that, okay, he's going back home. So he took a shortcut and got to Chris Haney's house before him. As Chris Haney drove into his

home, the man got out of his car, followed him to just behind Chris Haney's car. As Chris Haney got out of his car, he called out to him and said, Mr. Haney. Chris Haney turned around, looked at him, and the man shot him twice in the chest and twice in the head and killed him. Who was this man? And was he a lone wolf or was he working as part of conspiracy? This man, on the day, worked alone, from what we can gather. In the 1970s and early 80s, South Africa, the apartheid government in South Africa, recruited white people and they recruited particularly white people from the Soviet countries. This man, his name was Janusz Walusz, came from Poland and with his family, they detested communism. And the apartheid government, essentially, if you professed, whether you did or not, but if you professed to hate communism and believe in capitalism, they'd smooth the way

and give you papers and allow you to live in South Africa. And so that was how Janus Wallis ended up in South Africa. He got here and he started flirting with and got associated with the right wing in South Africa, joined up with neo-Nazi groupings like the Afrikaner Wierstand Bewering, which is the Afrikaner resistance movement, which is ultra-conservative movement. He got involved with the Conservative Party of South Africa. He signed up with them. He signed up with some UK-linked pro-Nazi groupings. And together with a member of parliament, a conservative member of parliament,

hatched the plot to kill Chris Haney. So on that Saturday, when he followed Chris Haney to his house, he was carrying a gun that had been given by this conservative member of parliament, Clive W. Lewis. And it was basically their plan that if they assassinated the most popular leader after Nelson Mandela, they would set off riots, they would set off mayhem and chaos, and South Africa's path to democracy would be stymied by the fact that negotiations would end or would stop. Their plan, in fact, explicitly was that the army and conservative elements within the apartheid government would say, why are we discussing all this? Why are we talking to FW Diklerk and the ANC?

And they would take Diklerk out of power in a coup d'etat, in a military coup, and install someone else and say, stop, no more democracy talks, no more talk of non-racialism. And South Africa continues pretty much as it was before 1990. Now, you and I might sit here and say, that sounds like such a crazy plan. But actually, the assassination of Chris Haney began, and we can talk about this, setting off those conditions for chaos and mayhem that they had hoped for. You listen to Dan Snowows History Hit. We're talking about the assassination of Nelson Mandela's number two, Chris Harney. More after this. We're about to witness the first coronation at Westminster Abbey in 70 years. And Gone Medieval from History Hit is your perfect companion for the event.

From the earliest English coronation records, to what the Royal Regalia used in the ceremony means, from the surprising origins of the recognition part of the service, to the lavish banquets that took place afterwards. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr Kat Jarman. And on Gone Medieval in April, we'll be exploring the medieval origins of this feast of pageantry.

We'll try to pick out the key moments for you to watch and trace their origins back into the mists of time. We've got some great guests and fascinating topics to lift the lid on a moment when, let's face it, people all around the world will have gone medieval. Subscribe and follow Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. lacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes,

who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. because it did cause a huge outcry right and there were some riots so what did it lead to and was it a rather different outcome to the one that uh shadowy MP and this Polish assassin hoped for?

It did set off some pretty scary scenes. It was a Saturday, and I can assure you, I was a young reporter. In fact, it was my first day working as a reporter at the newspaper called The Star, which is still going. I went out to Don Park, to the suburb where Chris Haney lived. And within hours, as I was making my way back to the office, it was chaos on the streets. There were barricades set up in townships. There were blockades of roads. There were attacks on government infrastructure, There were blockades of roads. There were attacks on government infrastructure,

molotov cocktails thrown at buses. That day, the right wing felt so emboldened that the head office of the South African Communist Party was shot at by armed right-wingers. They were taunting particular of black people by right-wingers on the streets of Johannesburg, Pretoria, all over. By nightfall, there were reports of people dying. Threats of racial warfare were being made by right-wing elements.

There were black militants who were saying, what is the point of negotiation when our heroes are being murdered in such a manner? of negotiation when our heroes are being murdered in such a manner. So Janice Wallace and Clive W. Lewis were very much correct in their assessment of what their action would do, because it did set off very scary scenes all over South Africa, from Cape Town to Johannesburg and further north across the country to KwaZulu-Natal and so forth. The police reports that day were scary and they didn't stop. Sunday, the 11th, Monday, the 12th were just as scary and carried the possibility of an explosion. Nelson Mandela reflected on this in his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, and he wrote that if ever there was a time when South Africa would go into civil war,

he felt that that was the day, that was the period, the days after Chris Rahn was murdered. In his biography, F.W. de Klerk, who was the president, says pretty much the same thing, that when that happened, he feared that South Africa would go to civil war. Both men agreed that this was the edge, as it were. And so how did South Africa pull back from the edge? I think it's leadership. You know, South Africa is going through quite a strained time at the moment. And a lot of people talk about, oh, what's going to happen to us? We have electricity blackouts and so forth.

I look back at that time and say, you know, to your question directly, how did we pull back? And I think it was the leadership of primarily Nelson Mandela, other people around him. I think F.W. de Klerk played some role in it, although his actions later on became quite controversial. What happened on the day itself was that Nelson Mandela started calling people when he got the message at about 10.30 a.m. that Hani had been murdered. F.W. de Klerk got the message about the same time. And what happened is that the two men called each other. And the first one to get through was De Klerk got through to Mandela. And they spoke for about 30 minutes that day. FW De Klerk explicitly said to Mandela, said to Mandela, there is nothing I can do here. There's nothing young, angry black people who regard me as their enemy will not listen to me if I go up and say, let's stop what's going on. He said, I don't have the credibility. I don't have the power to do anything about this. I can call out the army, but it won't stop what we are witnessing now.

In that conversation, the two men agreed that Mandela will do what at that time was an extraordinary thing, and it would be to address the nation as though he was the president of the country. So for the first time, a man who'd been banned from speaking to South Africans, from even being quoted, remember, you'd get a five-year jail sentence in South Africa if from the UK, for example, you'd sent me a quote by Mandela and I was found to have it on me. That was an automatic five-year jail sentence. to have it on me, that was an automatic five-year jail sentence. But in 1993, FW said, I will make the way and I'll make sure that the public broadcaster understands that this is a matter of national importance and that you have to go on and speak to the nation. Nelson Mandela said, that's what has to happen. So that was the first act and a very powerful one that Mandela went on television that evening and gave a speech asking the nation to be calm, to focus on the negotiations, to try and assuage the anger that was spreading through South Africa.

Africa. So that was the first step. But actually, that speech didn't work out quite as well as both men thought it would. But that was the first step in a whole continuum of actions that took place and that I believe helped stop South Africa fall into war. And democratic elections took place almost exactly a year later. So do you think that this sort of kickstarted the process again? Yes, I do. I think this is one of those, for you, Dan, history buffs. Many of us look at South Africa and say, OK, there were the negotiations and so forth. Those negotiations, as I said earlier, were not going very well by 1993.

The conservative elements in the apartheid government were emboldened. They wanted to essentially bring the whole thing to a halt. The ANC and Nelson Mandela were frustrated and so forth. So in that week, Nelson Mandela, Cyril Ramaphosa, his team said, there are two things that we need now to push for. And the first was a transitional executive council. And the transitional executive council was basically the ANC saying, we cannot have a free election when the government is the referee and the player. It's in charge of the army.

It's in charge of the broadcasting body. It's in charge of the army. It's in charge of the broadcasting body. of it, we can talk about it later. When things got really hairy in that week, FW De Klerk called a meeting of what was called the State Security Council in South Africa. The State Security Council was essentially the security guards of the state. They excluded everyone in the so-called soft portfolios in cabinet. Under apartheid, they basically ran South Africa on a very violent, if you will, basis. after Chris Haney's murder, there were some hard men and there were no women in that meeting. Many of them had committed all kinds of human rights abuses. And they sat in there and in that meeting, two things happened. They said to Ulf Mayer, who was the chief negotiator, that tell the ANC that we will agree to a transitional executive council. In that meeting, they said, look,

we can't give the ANC an election date, but we are prepared to sit down and agree on one with all the other parties involved. So April 27, that people like me talk about as the first time I voted and Freedom Day for South Africa, directly came from that day. And a few, in fact, six weeks after that meeting and after that accession by the apartheid government, a date was set, and that was April 27. And in my view, it was the events of that week that pushed those two events to happen. And that led to essentially April 27 taking place. So the assassination had the opposite effect of the one intended by the perpetrators. Yes. Today, South Africans talk about Trisani in very romantic terms. We like to say, oh, you know, look at the corruption. Trisani would not have

allowed this. We hold him up and give him characteristics that perhaps he would not have held onto for a very long time. But Trisani's murder did actually push South Africa from a lethargy in the negotiations for democracy. After three years of talking to the government, Nelson Mandela was angry and maybe a bit tired. The apartheid government was feeling like, well, maybe we should just abandon this whole idea of negotiations. But Chris Haney's murder put a spark under both sides and pushed both sides to say, we've got to finish this journey. And so the attempt by Janusz Walusz, by the right wing, by Clive W. Lewis in particular, it backfired horribly because it gave us that election date and it gave us a transitional executive. So by that time, Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk went to receive the Nobel Prize together in December 1993. As they

left South Africa on the 8th of December, a transitional executive council was holding its first meeting. Both Mandela and de Klerk were not there. But that transitional executive essentially oversaw the mechanics of setting up and running the 1994 elections that transformed this country and made it a democratic entity. Justice, thank you very much indeed for coming on the podcast. Tevon, what your book is called? My book is called The Plot to Save South Africa, and it tries to piece together what happened between the murder of Chris Fahney and the next nine days as Nelson Mandela tried to wrestle the country onto peace. And it includes nuggets like what happened with that

extraordinary meeting of the securicrats under the National Party and how they folded, essentially, to the push for democracy. It's an amazing story. Thank you very much, Justice Malala, for coming on and talking about it. Thanks so much. I appreciate being here. Thank you, Dan.