The ambassador of the European Union Commission on Human Rights and the Polish ambassador have been requested by the “South African Committee for Justice for Janusz Waluś” to attend his parole hearing at the Pretoria High Court on 7 August 2018.
This hearing will be yet another effort by Janusz Waluś to obtain parole and deportation to Poland, of which he is a citizen. He has been refused parole on a number of occasions, for various reasons, most of them political.
According to the Committee, “It should be noted that two Chinese murderers who chopped up and boiled the body of their female victim were recently granted parole and were deported to China. This has set a legal precedent and will be presented to the court by Waluś’s attorney as an example where justice for one should be justice for all.”
Although Waluś has long qualified for parole under South African law and prison regulations, the powerful South African Communist Party has been lobbying behind the scenes to keep him in prison. Waluś, a Polish immigrant to South Africa, was a political activist in the 1990’s with the Conservative Party who shot the well-known Communist terrorist Chris Hani to death on 10 April 1993 in an attempt to halt a communist takeover of South Africa.
Both Waluś and Conservative Party MP, Clive Derby-Lewis, were convicted and sentenced to death for Hani’s assassination, sentences which were shortly afterwards commuted to life imprisonment. Although many ANC and SACP terrorists received amnesty for terrorist attacks on South African civilians from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, both Waluś and Derby-Lewis were denied amnesty by that body due to Communist pressure.
At the time Waluś justified his drastic ation by stating: “They (the ANC) are communist and they will destroy this wonderful country. They will squander all that was built here by Whites with such difficulty. It pains me that everything here will be destroyed in the name of a multiracial Utopia that will never work here. They want freedom and democracy. In a few years freedom and democracy will be all they will have.”
Janus Waluś has already served 25 years of his life sentence. Common-law murderers in South Africa usually serve 10 years of a life sentence before they are let out on parole. He is being held in Kgosi Mampuru II Prison, which was known as “Pretoria Central” until the spate of ANC name changes in the city.
Last year, the Gauteng High Court granted Waluś parole, but the ANC regime’s minister of justice, Michael Masutha, appealed against the ruling to the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) in Bloemfontein. The SCA then referred the matter back to the minister for reconsideration.
However, in November last year the minister once again rejected Waluś’s parole application.
In his current application before the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria, Waluś is asking for the minister’s rejection to be set aside, alternatively that his release be ordered and that he be deported to Poland where his daughter already resides.
In his sworn statement before the court, Waluś said: “It is obvious that I have have done everything in my power to rehabilitate, to conduct myself in such a manner as to comply with the prison rules and I have shown remorse.”
Last year, Waluś was interviewed by a social worker who recommended his release on parole, saying “he will not pose any risk to the South African community should he be considered for deportation”. The same social worker said Waluś “realised that he had made a mistake and he took responsibility for his actions by attending rehabilitation programmes in prison”.
He is also requesting the court “to consider him as an ordinary prisoner, who has been serving a sentence for ordinary crimes”. He wants his case to be divorced from any political context.
On the other hand, he recognised that the killing of Hani was executed under conditions where he was “fighting as a foot soldier to uphold the apartheid state”.
“This fact, should, however, not be held against me and be used against me, especially where I was not granted amnesty for the crimes that I am currently serving a (life) sentence for.”
Waluś’s co-accused and a member of the President’s Council at the time, Clive Derby-Lewis, also had to fight a protracted legal battle to be released on parole, against intense Communist lobbying and interference with the legal process. Only upon being diagnosed with terminal cancer, was Derby-Lewis finally granted medical parole in 2015. However, he tasted only one year of freedom, dying on 3 November 2016.
Waluś’s attorney, Julian Knight, said it appeared that the ANC regime had a political reason for not wanting to release him. “They will continue to find every possible excuse to continue to refuse his release on parole,” Knight stated.
According to the South African Communist Party, Waluś was still “an unrepentant murderer and must remain in jail until he speaks the whole truth and nothing less”. The Party has long maintained that both Janusz Waluś and Clive Derby-Lewis were part of a bigger “right-wing conspiracy” to resist the communist takeover of South Africa in the early nineteen-nineties.
The Deputy General Secretary of the SACP, Solly Mapaila, has said that he will attend today’s hearing, together with the widow of the assassinated terrorist, Limpho Hani, and members of her family.
