Walus faces deportation after SA citizenship revoked

Chris Hani’s killer Janusz Waluś’ South African citizenship has been revoked and he has been served with deportation papers, it has emerged in the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) in Bloemfontein.

“The respondent’s South African citizenship has been withdrawn sometime in the past four weeks, and a warrant of deportation has been served on the head of prison by the department of home affairs,” Waluś’s advocate Roelof du Plessis told the court.

Minister of Justice and Correctional Services Michael Masutha was trying to overturn a 2016 court order letting Waluś out on parole.

The court action was the second attempt this month to block Walus’s release after Justice Mandisa Maya noted Hani’s victim impact statement to the parole board had apparently never been given to Masutha.

Last year, Home Affairs stated Waluś was given a “permanent residence permit in 1981 prior to attaining citizenship through the naturalisation process in 1987 under legislation administered by the apartheid government.”

The North Gauteng High Court Judge Nicoline Janse Van Niewenhuizen, who granted Walus’ parole, raised the ire of the South African Communist Party (SACP) when she said the views of the Hani family did not matter, and that the family had to move on 23 years after the murder.

“The SACP condemned these inconsiderate, insensitive, uncaring remarks which we believe played a central role in her decision to grant Waluś parole,” it said in a statement at the time.

“His own psychological evaluation from prison states that he still harbours his hatred for communists which he admittedly followed to kill Hani. He remains a danger not only to communists but to our society and to the development of our democracy, whose foundation we achieved in 1994, a year after he was arrested for the murder,” the SACP said.

Amnesty to Waluś was refused by the Truth and Reconciliation Committee which found he and his co-conspirator, Clive Derby Lewis, had failed to make full disclosure in respect of a number of “relevant and material issues”.

These included the purpose of the list of names and addresses found in Waluś’s apartment after his arrest and on which Hani’s name and address appeared, the purpose for which the murder weapon – a silenced Z88 pistol – was obtained and whether or not Waluś was acting on the orders or instructions of Derby-Lewis.

Judgment was reserved.

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