Chris Nicholson - The Assassination Agenda: Hani, Lubowski, Palme, Hammarskjöld, Lumumba: The NdB Sunday Show

In this edition of the NdB Sunday Show, Chris Steyn hosts retired High Court Judge Chris Nicholson to talk about his book “Who Really Killed Chris Hani?” This past Friday 10 April was the anniversary of his assasination in 1993. Nicholson challenges the bizarre narrative that a Right Pole Janusz Walus and a White Supremacist Clive Derby-Lewis operated without outside assistance. Nicholson takes viewers through his list of suspects, including Hani’s foes in the intelligence world, the captains of industry, and his rivals in the African National Congress (ANC). He further describes the similarity in motives for the murder of the “incorruptible” South African Communist Party (SACP) leader and those of five others: Anti-Apartheid Advocate Anton Lubowski, UN Commissioner for Namibia Bernt Carlsson, Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme, former Republic of Congo Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, and former UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld. He also deals with the suspicious death of Paul Madaka, who headed the National Intelligence Agency's (NIA) Anti-Corruption Unit. Nicholson describes how different a country South Africa would have been had Hani lived..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..Watch here:.Listen here.Edited transcript of the interview.Chris Steyn (00:00.962)Welcome to the NDB Sunday show with me, Chris Steyn and retired High Court Judge Chris Nicholson. Welcome, Chris. Chris Nicholson (00:11.69)Thank you for having me on your show. Chris Steyn (00:14.83)You've written eight books, but the one I'd love to talk to you about today is titled, Who Really Killed Chris Hani? And it's particularly pertinent because he was assassinated on 10 April, 1993. So it was the anniversary of his death on Friday. Chris Nicholson (00:40.648)Yes, it's 33 years since that fateful day when he was shot, and it was my honour and privilege to try and record who really killed him and try and get past the facts that are commonly accepted by the public. Chris Steyn (00:59.618)You have very profound quotes in your book, one being that one of the most important or the most important thing in an assassination is no who pulled the trigger, but who paid for the bullet. And you have gone through masses of information and evidence and testimony to try and give us a verdict on who the masterminds were. Now, his assassin, the trigger man, Janusz Walus, is out of prison, but he still has not revealed who were involved in the conspiracy. So Chris, tell us what you have found, please. Chris Nicholson (01:50.506)Could I start from the beginning? I was really inspired to write this book by what Nelson Mandela said in 1998 when he was talking on receiving the Chris Hani Award. And he said, the fateful day of Chris Hani’s brutal murder is indelibly etched on the hearts of all freedom loving people. And no one will be satisfied until the truth about his death is known. So that speech by Mandela inspired me to try and get beyond the facts that are known. Janus Walusz pulled the trigger. Clive Derby-Lewis was the man who supplied him with the weapon and helped plan the killing. But I was trying to find out if there were puppet masters behind the scenes who were pulling the strings and making sure that Chris Hani didn't live long enough to influence the new South Africa. And some of the earliest evidence that I found arose at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings. There were hearings into who killed Chris Hani and a researcher, Christelle TerreBlanche, daughter, I think, of the famous Sampie Terre’Blanche went to South Africa's intelligence agencies to find out what information they had. She was given a slender file which had 12 documents in it. And clearly some intelligence officer had had a bad day because he left these 12 documents. Although they purported to be about Chris Hani, they actually related to events that had occurred in the early 60s. They related to the killing of Dag Hammarskjöld and Patrice Lumumba. Now, the logo of those documents was the South African Institute of Maritime Research. So that excited my suspicions because if in the file relating to Chris Hani’s murder were 12 documents, Chris Nicholson (04:11.977)…dating back 30 years to Dag Hammarskjöld and Patrice Lumumba. And under the logo of this company, the South African Institute of Maritime Research. Was there a link over three decades with that particular institution. And my research has then revealed that the South African Institute of Maritime Research was in fact a front company for British intelligence. That made me very interested and I found later a report from an organisation called the Executive Intelligence Review. It revealed then that the South African Institute of Maritime Research was a front for British intelligence and that it had a substantial presence in South Africa. So I started trying to find a link then with the murders of Patrice Lumumba in 1961, Dag Hammarskjöld later that same year, and moving all the way up to 1993 when Chris Harney was murdered. So what I tried to investigate were other murders, including those of the Swedish Prime Minister, Olof Palme, Anton Lebowski and Bernt Carlsson, amongst others. So what I was trying to discover was, did the people who killed Chris Hani have the same sort of motive that those who organised the murders I've mentioned in the three decades since 1961? Chris Steyn (06:02.701)Continue, please, Chris. Chris Nicholson (06:06.227)So what I found was that according to the Executive Intelligence Review, there appeared to be three main candidates for the killing of Chris Hani. They appeared to be the corporate section. And if one looks at the corporate world, one wonders why would they want Chris Hani murdered? Well, somebody… Janusz Walus was arrested on the same day that Chris Hani was murdered. I'm sure people will recall that an Afrikaans lady saw the number plate of Janusz Walus’ vehicle. And within 15 minutes, Janus Walusz was arrested. His flat was searched and there was found a list, a hit list of the people that were to be murdered. It may be a surprise to everyone that top of the list was Nelson Mandela. I think Joe Slovo was number two, but Chris Hani was number three. And he was therefore reckoned to be the most dangerous person in South Africa from the point of view of the people who wanted him murdered. And on that list was the number of a vehicle belonging to a man..l. Now he was interviewed by a journalist and he said he thought that Chris Hani was murdered because he was incorruptible. And evidently there was a feeling that others in the ANC were corruptible, but that Chris Hani had to be got rid of. Now Chris Hani was an avowed Communist and he believed fervently in the Freedom Charter. And that of course had as one of its main tenets, the fact that the wealth of South Africa was to be redistributed. Now, anyone knowing anything about South Africa will know that it has vast resources and mineral wealth. In fact, learned authors I've consulted reckon that South Africa's resource… Chris Nicholson (08:32.705)…wealth is greater than any other country in the world and even way beyond those of Russia. And yet we have the greatest income gap in the world as well. In other words, a measure which is known as the Gini coefficient, which measures the gap between rich and poor in South Africa is the worst in the world. So it seemed to me that the captains of industry had a good motive to eliminate Chris Hani because he was planning to redistribute the wealth of the country and move away from this appalling Gini coefficient or income gap. So it seemed to me that the captains of industry had a motive to kill Chris Hani. And what's so interesting is that at the time Janus Walusz murdered Chris Harney, he was employed by a man called Peter Jackson, who was quite a mysterious businessman. Janusz Walus was driving a car owned by Peter Jackson, this captain of industry in South Africa with mysterious connections. And if one looked inside the docket, the police docket for the Hani case, there was an instruction from the security police that Peter Jackson, the captain of industry, was not to be investigated under any circumstances. So if I was investigating who had a motive, I would certainly involve the captains of industry. Then, of course, one would have to look at the intelligence agencies. Now why would British intelligence want to get rid of Chris Hani? Now as you know, British intelligence has one of its main objectives to protect British industry around the world. And if South Africa is this treasure house of mineral and resource wealth, then British intelligence would like to make sure that that treasure house… Chris Nicholson (10:57.685)…is still available for British companies and British investors. So if the Intelligence Review, the magazine, suggests that MI6, British intelligence, was interested in the murder of Chris Hani, they would probably be on the right track If one looks at the role played by Peter Jackson and one sees the obvious idea of preventing a redistribution of the wealth of South Africa. There are of course also other candidates, other people with a motive and if one were to investigate for example why Chris Hani’s security guards were given the weekend off. He had had death threats, people…I think even assassination attempts before. He had called for more security, but strangely that very weekend, his security guards were given time off. It was of course the Easter weekend, and I'm sure they would have loved to be with their families, but Chris Hani having asked for extra protection, it was most strange that his security guards were given leave. In a book that I found, is entitled Grand Treason, and it's written by an ex-intelligence agent for the old South African intelligence agencies, this man… wrote under a nom de plume of Schickelgruber, and he devotes two or three chapters to the assassination of Chris Hani. Now what's very important I feel is that he has access to some messages sent by the old Afrikaner order intelligence people to the bosses in which one sent the day before Chris Hani’s murder, one the day of his murder and one… Chris Nicholson (13:25.801)…two weeks afterwards. And these messages carefully plan the murder of Chris Hani. They explain how the security guards are to be given the time off. They explain that it was to be moved a day forward. It was planned for the Sunday and it was moved back to the Saturday. And they even explain that there's a Polish person who's going to be part of this. It seems as though Janusz Walus was going to be a driver, but later decided that he could carry out the deed himself. And what is also important is that an agency in the ANC, a secret hit squad, the Omega hit squad was mentioned as being behind this particular murder. So one has a number of agencies, institutions. One has the business sector. One has the intelligence sector, and then one has the ANC. And one knows, of course, at the time there were intense factional battles in the ANC, Modise and Mbeki versus Hani. And that partisanship, that intensity had stemmed from years before when Chris Hani was sent on a suicidal mission into the then Rhodesia to overthrow Ian Smith's regime. Then it seems ludicrous to move south and overthrow the Apartheid regime with a bunch of colleagues and some AK-47s. So when Chris Hani returned from that suicidal expedition, which had been planned by Joe Modise, he wrote a famous Hani memorandum in which he criticised the ANC for the methods they were using at the time. And as a result of his memorandum, he was actually sentenced to death, but he was finally saved by Oliver Tambo. So he lived to tell the tale. But what he was trying to explain was that these suicidal missions would not work and there had to be a more organised strategy..Read more:.The NdB Sunday Show — Jonathan Deal: Mkhwanazi, Masemola, The Big 5 - and the silence of the GNU….Chris Steyn (15:53.038)Chris, how different would South Africa, could South Africa have been today if Hani was not assassinated? Because surely it changed the course of history. Chris Nicholson (16:09.481)I think it would have been completely different because when …said Chris Hani was incorruptible, I think he was right. In my book, I tend to advance a theory that the captains of industry, big business, decided that the way to win over the ANC was to bribe or to pay a number of the ANC leaders money either by way of shares in companies with dividends to pay off the price of the shares. And so it seemed to me that instead of the redistribution of wealth that was planned in the Freedom Charter, we seem to have a situation in which the black elite was enriched either by donations of shares or by buying shares and paying them off with dividends. And I think recently we have very good authority in that the very well respected journalist Professor William Gumede, he has suggested recently that a trillion rand was handed over since 1994 to a hundred black leaders in order to avert what they saw, what white monopoly capital saw as the possible tragedy of the Freedom Charter and the redistribution of wealth. I know Archbishop Tutu once said the gravy train stopped only long enough for the Black elite to jump on board. So what seems to have happened is that the Gini coefficient, awful measure between rich and poor, has not improved in favor of African people. In fact, it appears to have worsened. Chris Nicholson (18:17.937)So that we have a situation. This isn't the words of Chris Nicholson. These are the words of the Governor of the Reserve Bank who's explained how appalling our gap is between the rich and poor. And the point seems to have been that since 1994, and we've had obviously 32 years, what was promised by the ANC and I quote, quite ironically, a better life for all has in fact not occurred. And what we have is appalling rates of even hunger. I was reading the other day that 63% of South Africans go to bed hungry. Now it seems to me that that is appalling. In a country with the greatest resources on earth, it seems to me tragic that so many people go to bed hungry. So now to answer your question directly, I believe that Chris Hani was called incorruptible by somebody who was well known to him. He would have made a big difference to the lot of South Africans today. So for that reason, the killing of Chris Hani on the 10th of AprilI believe was one of the greatest tragedies our country has known. Chris Steyn (19:50.542)Chris, one of the similar sinister deaths, those five that you investigated, was that of Advocate Anton Lubowski in Namibia. Give us your verdict, please. Chris Nicholson (20:05.384)You know, I feel very, very sad about Anton Lubowski. He was an advocate and had so much courage that firstly, as a white advocate, he joined SWAPO and then he investigated the appalling plunder of Namibia by the mining companies and he started work on a charter to redistribute the wealth in Namibia. And this charter really was aimed at nationalising in the sense of making the wealth of Namibia available to the Namibian population. This Gini coefficient I've mentioned to you is as appalling in Namibia as it is in South Africa and in fact in Botswana. So there seems to be a pattern here that in these mining colonialist countries, the Gini coefficient, the gap between rich and poor is appallingly bad. So Anton Lubowski was planning this change and he and others drafted documents and they were very friendly with Sam Nujoma and they were hoping that with the new Namibia, this plan of theirs would be put into operation. But sadly, his briefcase was stolen from his house in Windhoek, and those plans were discovered. A man widely thought to be a CIA agent befriended Lubowski and stayed with him, and the Lebowski family extended their friendship to him. But he was spying on behalf of the CIA and the mining companies. And he discovered then that Lubowski had these plans for the new Namibia and had the ear of Sam Nujoma. And it seemed as though Lubowski then was going to be very influential in the new Namibia and that his economic plans would find favour. Chris Nicholson (22:32.75)…and there would be this redistribution of the wealth. Of course, at the same time was a United Nations Administrator General, Bernt Carlsson, who was to take over Namibia when it became independent or to lead it to independence. And he had planned and put into effect a number of actions against large corporations. This perhaps needs a little bit of background. In the early 70s, the United Nations passed a number of resolutions, including one for the protection of the resource wealth of Namibia. It provided that in order to take minerals, diamonds, etc., fish out of Namibia, you needed permission from this United Nations body. If you didn't do so, you would be liable for damages. So the big mining and other companies in Namibia carried on willy-nilly taking out the resources, coming to billions and billions of dollars. And Bernt Carlsson, who was to be the Administrator General of Namibia, he made it his business to assist Namibians abroad to bring actions against large companies… And he was then instituting these actions against the large companies. And he was then sadly lured onto the plane that crashed over Lockerbie and he lost his life. So suddenly those actions, which were to recover the mineral wealth of Namibia, which had been taken by the big companies, all those actions suddenly ceased. So Anton Lubowski and Bernt Carlsson were other heroes who were trying to fight for the people, trying to redistribute the wealth and change this awful gap between rich and poor. Olaf Palme also was the… Chris Nicholson (24:58.588)…the Prime Minister of Sweden. He was trying to unite Europe against the Apartheid regime. And I think it's well known he was gunned down in the streets of Stockholm. And in my book, I delve into the South African connection to that murder. And I think, Chris, if I can explain that as a lawyer, I started piecing together all these cases. In our law, there is a doctrine of similar fact evidence which provides that if you can find a pattern in various murders and if you start with Patrice Lumumba, now he was trying to redistribute the wealth of the Congo and he was murdered as everyone knows. Dag Hammarskjöld, he was on an aeroplane and that aeroplane was bombed. And there seems to be a lot of evidence of conspiracy by the secret organisation, the South African Institute of Maritime Research in that particular killing of Dag Hammarskjöld. So one has a common thread, a pattern through these murders. And it seemed to me it's called the Similar Fact Doctrine in law. And it seems to me that each of these cases strengthens the validity of the others to say that there seems to be a pattern that mostly at or about independence, you'll find that people who are there to redistribute the wealth suddenly find that they've been assassinated. And it's been true in South America as well. So I believe that Namibia, even Botswana, South Africa would have been much better countries. In other words, a better life for all would have been carried out, not just lip service being paid to it. Chris Steyn (27:07.788)Chris, we spoke about Hani being incorruptible. And I noticed that in the book, you also dealt with another suspicious death. And that was Paul Madaka, who headed the National Intelligence Agency's Anti-Corruption Unit. Chris Nicholson (27:29.016)Yes, you know, Paul Madaka bought a wonderful car and he loved the speed of this car and he drove it at high speed and died and he was divulging bribes that appeared to have accrued to Thabo Mbekii, the previous president of South Africa. So while there's no direct evidence that he was murdered, the circumstantial evidence is there and his revelations were published in the Sunday Times. I don't know if you recall at the time there were these revelations about bribes being paid…and suddenly he died. So, you know, it would be foolish to attribute it to anyone in particular, but, you know, the circumstances are certainly suspicious. Chris Steyn (28:44.544)Chris, you had a wonderful quote there, translated from one of our beautiful African languages, saying that some crimes never die. And I think we can conclude that the assassination of Chris Hani and these others were crimes that would never die. Chris Nicholson (29:07.654)Yes, Chris, I'm so glad you mentioned that because I have people have asked me why I wanted to write about Chris Hani and others I wrote about... And I feel honoured and privileged to have been able to tell their story. And they were so brave that I think we can all regard them as models for us. you know, I just like to quote with something Oyama Mabandla said in an article about Chris Hani, a soldier of peace. And he said, and I quote; “But Hani can never die. He lives in our dreams and aspirations to make this democracy worthy of the sacrifice of people like himself. Our loving memory of this giant must be turned into an abiding quest for justice, dignity, and a better life for all our people." End quote. So, you know, I would love to see statues of Chris Hani spread around our nation and his work and what he died for commemorated in every possible way. I recently gave a talk to Fort Hare University where he was of course an alumnus and I suggested that maybe a statue should be erected on that campus to honour a man who gave his life for the freedom of the country and set an example that we should all be following. Chris Steyn (30:57.228)Thank you. That was retired High Court Judge Chris Nicholson on the NdB Sunday Show with me, Chris Steyn. Thank you, Chris. Chris Nicholson (31:09.555)Thank you for having me.

Chris Nicholson - The Assassination Agenda: Hani, Lubowski, Palme, Hammarskjöld, Lumumba: The NdB Sunday Show

Related Stories

Jonathan Deal - Fight against “disarmament” of citizens as another top cop falls…

SA businesses battered by infrastructure instability - Muhammad Ali

How solidarity plans to force out BEE by 2030: Connie Mulder | The NdB Sunday Show

James Myburgh: The crime nightmare from which SA has yet to wake (Part Two)