MURDERED SACP leader Chris Hani was targeted because he was seen as a hardline communist who would collapse the country.
This is according to a final interview done with the man who organised his assassination, Clive Derby-Lewis, while he was out on medical parole.
Derby-Lewis was released last June after spending 22 years in jail. He had been diagnosed with cancer and died two weeks ago.
In the first part of a four-part interview released yesterday, Derby-Lewis said: “Hani was a hardline communist who was determined at all costs, even to lay the country to waste, to achieve his political aims.
“He was a radical. He was uncontrollable by the ANC higher authorities.
“He was a man who targeted civilians in preference to military targets. As far as we were concerned, he was public enemy number one.”
Derby-Lewis said the reason he and gunman Janusz Walus wanted to kill Hani was to plunge South Africa into chaos.
“Then the security forces would have had to declare martial law. They would take over and restore law and order.”
Derby-Lewis said they had decided not to kill Nelson Mandela or Thabo Mbeki as that could have made the country totally ungovernable.
He also revealed that Walus sold him out after being fed beer by investigators who made Walus believe they were on his side.
Derby-Lewis said in the interview that he was opposed to the release of Mandela because he had refused to distance himself from violence.
He described FW De Klerk as a traitor who had betrayed white South Africans.
He claimed De Klerk and other National Party officials negotiated in secret with the ANC to secure positions for themselves in what was to become a black-ruled South Africa.
