One of two convicted far-right killers of the South African communist party leader, Chris Hani, said yesterday that he and other right-wingers believed Hani was plotting to kill President Nelson Mandela. Clive Derby-Lewis, a former member of parliament and senior figure in South Africa's Conservative Party (CP), said right-wingers "had information" that Hani was planning to "eliminate and assassinate" Mr Mandela and other leaders of the African National Congress (ANC).
Derby-Lewis did not elaborate but said he feared that Hani, who led the ANC-allied South African Communist Party, could eventually become the country's president. "He was very popular, especially among more radical elements," Derby-Lewis said. "The decision to make Hani a target was possibly a tribute to his popularity." Derby-Lewis earlier described his extensive political links with prominent right-wingers abroad, including US military generals and British MPs, but did not name anyone.
Derby-Lewis and a former CP associate, Janusz Walus, are serving life jail terms for the murder of Hani on April 10th, 1993, which nearly plunged South Africa into a race war.
The two denied guilt during their 1994 trial, but this week admitted the murder to South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in an attempt to win an amnesty. Derby-Lewis told the commission he had numerous meetings in the 1980s and early 1990s with international anti-communist groups, including the Brussels-based World Anti-Communist League.
He was also at one time, he added, the president of the London-based Western Goals Institute, whose members included a prominent US major-general, a former CIA chief and a senior member of the House of Lords.
The Monday Club, a right-wing lobby group within the Conservative Party, invited Derby-Lewis to address it in the 1980s, the assassin also said.