Zuma promised Hani’s killers he would pardon them but didn’t follow through – report

Former president Jacob Zuma allegedly promised Chris Hani’s killers – Clive Derby-Lewis and Janusz Waluś – that he would give them a presidential pardon.

This is the claim of Liesl Göttert, who helped Zuma with public relations and made a documentary about him.

Zuma’s meeting with Derby-Lewis

Speaking to City Press, Göttert said she was in the room when the former president and current MK party leader met Derby-Lewis at the C-Max prison in Pretoria in 2004.

This comes after Waluś revealed, during an interview with eNCA’s Annika Larson last week, that Zuma met Derby-Lewis.

“I know that Jacob Zuma visited Clive. I don’t know what he wanted, but he was very positively discussed. It looked like he was going to help us somehow, and I don’t know why, but finally, nothing came out of it,” he said.

The MK party responded to that interview by saying Zuma “does not have to explain” why he visited Hani’s killers.

“I’m sure you’ll understand when you’re a president, there’s some secrecy and a certain oath that you need to take naturally. So, the president doesn’t have to explain himself if he doesn’t need to, and it could be that there are sensitive issues that could lead to other matters that are not required to come out naturally,” MK party spokesperson Nhlamulo Ndhlela said.

ALSO READ: ‘Zuma doesn’t have to explain why he visited Clive Derby-Lewis’ – MK [VIDEO]

Göttert, however, has given an explanation. She told City Press that Zuma promised to grant Derby-Lewis and Waluś pardons when he became president in 2009.

The former president allegedly told Derby-Lewis that “he understood that Clive did what he did as a soldier for his people and that Janusz did it out of hatred for communism because he grew up in that system”. 

Pardon thwarted by ‘forces within ANC and SACP’

Zuma didn’t pardon Derby-Lewis and Waluś because of opposition within the ANC and SACP.

He revealed this to Göttert when she asked him about it years later.

“He said he couldn’t do it because there are forces in the ANC and the SACP that wouldn’t allow it. And this after he had promised Clive in that small room. Clive was so disappointed; he just shook his head when I went to tell him. He told me: ‘I respected him so much; I believed him.'”

Waluś murdered Hani in 1993. Derby-Lewis gave him the gun.

Derby-Lewis, who suffered from lung cancer, died aged 80 in 2016. He was released from prison on medical parole in 2015.

Waluś was deported to Poland in December after controversially being paroled.

NOW READ: ‘I would do it again’: Janusz Waluś on killing Chris Hani and Derby-Lewis’ alleged meeting with Zuma [VIDEO]