A very slow death sentence for Janusz Walus

Yes, sure I would have flipped the switch that dropped the trap. The hangman’s trap.

We are talking Janusz Walus here, following the most recent decision to refuse him parole.

Walus murdered SA Communist Party leader Chris Hani in 1993 and took SA to the brink of a race conflagration.

There’s little proof that capital punishment reduces violent crime. But prevention is not the only reason for the ultimate penalty.

Think of the death penalty as a mouthwash. Walus was phlegm deserving of abrupt expulsion. He was sentenced to hang, as was the man who led the plot, the Conservative Party MP Clive Derby-Lewis.

Fortunately for them, before the sentence could be carried out, the Constitutional Court dispensed of the death penalty.

Their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment, making them eligible for parole in 2010, after serving 15 years in prison. From 2010 on, as a matter of rote, they made regular parole applications, all as routinely rejected.

Eventually, Derby-Lewis was released in mid-2015, after 20 years imprisonment, and died 18 months later, aged 80. Walus continued knocking at the barred parole door.

There has been strong resistance to Walus’ release. The actual refusals, however, have been dressed in various flimsy arguments, varying from application to application.

This time, Justice Minister Ronald Lamola says that he was influenced by submissions from Hani’s widow and the SA Communist Party. The Hanis’ position is that Walus has never apologised nor shown genuine contrition. They also argue that he was part of a much wider conspiracy, which he needs to come clean on.

The Hani family’s first argument is shaky. Walus has repeatedly tried to meet with the Hanis for them to hear, he says, a confession of culpability and remorse, and his plea for forgiveness. They have repeatedly refused.

Lamola doesn’t address the second argument, the as-yet-undisclosed assassination plot.

Among those fingered are the apartheid government, various international rightwing and anti-communist organisations, as well as claims that Hani was killed because he was about to expose the corrupt activities of former ANC Defence Minister Joe Modise.

Lamola opts instead for a whole new set of sophistry. If indeed he were to parole Walus, says Lamola, it would have to be on the basis of the regulations at the time of the crime.

“This implies that … he would be on parole for a maximum period of three years, less any possible remissions for which he might qualify… [That] would negate the severity that the court sought when sentencing him.”

This is legal nonsense. Parole is not a right, but is not dependent on the sentencing court having found mitigating circumstances.

Walus is undoubtedly a nasty rubbish. But because of political interference, he is being denied rights that not a single other murderer has been deprived of.

If the original sentence had been carried out in 1993, it would, deservedly, have been all over at the flip of that switch. Instead, the 2020 reality is that we still have the death penalty, it’s just that we now implement it very, very slowly.

William Saunderson-Meyer.

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