The Case of Chris Hani and the Standard of Amnesty

- produced by Andrei Greenawalt & Maria Burnett

This 18-minute video examines the amnesty hearings of Janusz Walus and Clive Derby-Lewis, two members of the now extinct Conservative Party who in 1993 assassinated Chris Hani, a popular ANC and SACP leader. The video begins with the testimony of Janusz Walus who explains how he carried out the assassination, followed by a short biography of Chris Hani. The remaining two-thirds of the video documents the cross-examination of Clive Derby-Lewis, a former member of Parliament and a leading member of the white right wing movement, who orchestrated the killing. The lawyer for the Hani family, George Bizos, who had been Nelson Mandela’s lawyer at his treason trial in the 1960s, questions the actions and motivations of both men in front of the Amnesty Committee as well as the Hani, Derby-Lewis, and Mandela families.

In order to receive amnesty, applicants had to fully disclose all relevant facts as well as demonstrate that their acts served a political objective on behalf of a political organization. The standards for amnesty and the difficult questions surrounding the definition of a political act are the focus of this presentation. The testimonies of the killers, the sharp questioning of Mr. Bizos, and the reactions of the crowd also reveal the drama and emotional complexity of the amnesty process.

Biographies

Maria Burnett

Maria Burnett is a member of the Yale Law School class of 2005. She graduated from Princeton University with a degree in Architecture and Urban Planning in 1998, after having spent her junior year at the University of Cape Town researching funding and design of low-income housing on the Cape Flats. She returned after graduation and spent another two years working on housing issues in Southern Africa. As an assistant researcher at Human Rights Watch Africa Division, Maria focused on human rights issues in West Africa.

Andrei Greenawalt

Andrei is a member of the class of 2005 at Yale Law School. As an undergraduate at Princeton University, where he graduated in 1999 with a degree in Politics, he spent six months studying at the University of Cape Town and attended several hearings on the TRC. He has written a short paper on the standards for amnesty, and his undergraduate thesis examined the role of church leaders in ending apartheid. Before law school, he worked at the Association to Benefit Children in New York City and for Congressman Henry Waxman in Washington, D.C.