Janusz Walus who has been in prison for nearly 30 years for killing South Africa’s anti-apartheid hero Chris Hani was recently stabbed while in prison just days before he was due to be released on parole.
The man accused of stabbing Janusz Walus in Kgosi Mampuru prison is currently serving a life sentence for murdering a Lieutenant-Colonel in the South African Air Force, and, injuring another in 2007 after failing the officers’ course for a second time.
He stabbed 69-year-old Walus in his upper body on Tuesday afternoon.
The assailant is a former SA Air Force sergeant who was stationed at the Thaba Tshwane Air Force College in Pretoria where he worked in the Human Resources Department.
His name is Samuel Mandla Madonsela.
Walus, 69, shot Mr Hani in 1993 in a failed attempt to derail South Africa’s transition from white-minority rule to democratic rule.
Hani was regarded as the most popular politician after anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela.
Walus killed Hani as he picked up the newspapers outside his home in April 1993 by shooting him at point-blank range.
Waluz was arrested soon after the shooting but initially denied all knowledge of the assassination, nor of how the weapon and other items came to be in his car. He then however made a verbal confession of his actions to a policeman whom he thought was a right winger. In this verbal confession he told the police that although he had committed the act by himself, another prominent right winger, Clive Derby-Lewis, had helped him with providing the weapon. The policeman he told this to was however no right winger, and promptly reported Waluz’s conversation to the investigating officer in the case.
Forensic tests were immediately carried out and it was established that the fatal bullets had indeed been fired from the gun found in his possession.
Walus was arrested and sentenced to death but tthe sentence was reduced to life after South Africa abolished the death penalty.
Hani who was 50 years old was the leader of the SACP and a senior member of the ANC’s military wing.
Walus is a Polish immigrant whose South African citizenship was revoked in 2017.
