Janusz Waluś, who had been on parole since 2022, is to be deported.
On Friday the government confirmed the decision to deport Waluś and said the National Commissioner of Correctional Services would formally hand him over to the Department of Home Affairs to carry out the process.
Waluś was convicted and imprisoned for the assassination of SACP secretary-general Chris Hani in 1993.
The SA Communist Party said Waluś’s release on parole was a source of anger and disappointment.
The party and Hani’s family met with a government delegation led by Deputy President Paul Mashatile and three Ministers on Thursday, where it called for an inquest into Hani’s death, saying that without it, justice was incomplete.
The Hani family and the SACP acknowledged the government’s effort to reach out, but this was on the eve of the end of Waluś parole. The meeting occurred a few hours before the parole ended. “The eleventh-hour notification clearly appeared to be the result of how the Department of Correctional Services, under Minister Dr Pieter Groenewald – leader of the Freedom Front Plus – handled the matter,” the SACP said.
“We made it clear: no family of apartheid-era, or other victims should ever be treated in this manner. This was a joint appeal grounded in justice and humanity,” the SACP said.
The ANC welcomed Waluś’s deportation.
“As a nation we cannot live with an assassin in our midst. Your callous act is akin to a sharp knife that plunged our inner being and destroyed the soul of a nation which pinned its hope on Cde Chris Hani. You denied Hani’s children a caring father, Cde Limpho [Hani] a loving husband. And the nation a great leader who loved his people above himself,” it said.