EFF statement on the 30th anniversary of the assignation of Chris Hani
10 April 2023
The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) dips its flag in honor of the life of Freedom Fighter and Revolutionary Chris Thembisile Hani, who was assassinated on the 10th of April 1993. The 10th of April 2023 represents exactly 30 years since the cowardly assassination of a Revolutionary. The assassination of Chris Hani robbed South Africa of a socialist future, and denied our nation the most upright State President our people would have ever known.
We salute Chris Hani because from him we learn and embrace socialist revolutionary consistency and rejection of narrow Careerism. Chris Hani was a Marxist-Leninist socialist Revolutionary who never sacrificed principles on the altar of political convenience. Despite being the most popular leader of the ANC after President Nelson Mandela, he did not suck up to the capitalist class establishment and did not enter into secret negotiations and agreements with the white capitalist establishment, a phenomenon that defined all senior ANC leaders after the unbanning of political parties and release of political prisoners.
30 years after the cowardly assassination of Chris Hani, it is still impossible to believe and accept that his murder was plotted by just 2 right wing individuals. There is practical possibility that the white capitalist establishment with collaboration with collaborationists in the former liberation movement planned the assassination of Chris Hani because he represented a radical socialist agenda they stood opposed to. Chris
Hani was not assassinated due to the insecurities of 2 individuals, but due to the systemic insecurity of the entire capitalist system.
Chris Hani was born on the 28th of June 1942 in Sabelele Village, Cofivamba in the Eastern Cape. From a very young age, Hani exhibited the attributes of a leader of his people, who had a deep affinity with education. As early as 15-years of age, Hani was already within the ranks of the erstwhile ANC Youth League, and by the age of 20, he began to identify himself as a Communist, as he joined the South African Communist Party after he completed his studies at the University of Fort Hare.
By 1963, at the age of 21 Chris Hani was in exile, persecuted for his determination to fight against colonial conquest and the Apartheid system which legislated the oppression, dispossession and humiliation of African people in South Africa. His exile included military and political training by the Soviet Union, a relationship which he was part of forming that to this day defines the attitude of revolutionaries in South Africa towards Russia led by President Vladmir Putin.
Chris Hani faced numerous attempts on his life and by consequence the lives of his children whilst in exile, but this never deterred him from remaining loyal to the cause of the total liberation of Africans from subjugation and exploitation. He was an honest and forthright leader, who spoke bitterly against the emerging character of elitism within the liberation movement, which had abandoned exiles and had no verifiable strategy to topple Apartheid and pursued personal enrichment under the guise of mobilizing international solidarity against the Apartheid system.
Hani remains an inspiration and an embodiment of the ideals of socialism and the demands of our people for land, education, housing, healthcare, equality, and prosperity. His ideas have been betrayed by a state led by collaborators and committed spies, who are pre-occupied with utilizing the state as a means to protect the control of the means of production by a white capitalist minority. The Communist Party he once led, has dwindled into a lobby group, whose sole interest is securing positions in Cabinet regardless of how the working class is permanently betrayed by the political elite.
The betrayal of Chris Hani by those who seek to hoist his name up high, was cemented when his killer Janusz Walué was released from prison on the 7th of December 2022.
Walué, who almost took South Africa to the brink of civil war on the eve of democracy, killed the future of South Africa and today he roams the streets of our country because the ruling party and the Courts reward the disrespect and murder of African life.
The EFF re-commits itself to the ideals which Chris Hani stood for, and we pledge to never betray the struggles of our people at the altar of political expediency and upward social mobility. Hani believed in building state-capacity and fiercely opposed the advent of privatization, and dependency on imperialist nations. The EFF remains the only political alternative which will truly further these struggles Chris Hani stood for Economic Freedom in our lifetime, and through us as generation of Economic Freedom, Chris Hani will never die!
Issued by Sinawo Thambo, National Spokesperson, EFF, 10 April 2023
