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0:31

Hi, everybody.

0:33

Welcome to Dan Snow's History here. 30 years

0:36

ago on the 10th of April, 1993, I remember watching

0:38

my TV. I

0:41

remember watching the evening news. And

0:43

we heard a tragic story from South Africa in which one

0:46

of the leading anti-apartheid figures, Nelson

0:48

Mandela's heir apparent, Chris Harnie, was

0:51

assassinated by a Polish

0:54

immigrant, a radicalized conservative

0:57

South African. He was shot at extremely

1:00

close range and died instantly. Like

1:02

that other great political assassination of Archduke

1:05

Franz Ferdinand in 1914, it almost threw an entire region of

1:07

the world into war. Everybody

1:12

involved, from de Klerk to Mandela to other people, said

1:14

that that's as close as South Africa

1:16

got to civil war. There

1:19

was enormous unrest and anger, frustration

1:21

among the black community. And

1:25

among the white South Africans, there

1:27

was a danger that could have provoked a reaction,

1:30

that could have seen slow moves

1:32

towards a multiracial democracy

1:35

stopped. It came

1:37

very close to all-out violence.

1:40

One of the reasons it didn't was because of the remarkable leadership

1:43

of Nelson Mandela and to a certain extent FW

1:45

de Klerk, the white president of South Africa. Mandela

1:48

gave one of his finest speeches on television

1:50

that night. He said he's reaching out to every

1:52

single South African, black and white, from the very

1:55

depths of my being. He

1:57

talks about the cold-blooded murder of Chris Harnie.

1:59

But he managed to

2:01

use words that

2:04

portrayed it not as a racial killing, but

2:06

as an act of violence designed

2:08

to frustrate the march

2:10

towards democracy, freedom and

2:13

dignity for all South Africans. It

2:16

was an amazing period of history. And here to tell us all about

2:18

it is a historian, Justice

2:21

Malala. He talked to me from Cape Town. He's

2:23

gone back to the archives, looked at much of the detail. Much

2:26

of the archives, by the way, have been destroyed. He

2:28

was able to piece together the story of what happened

2:31

that tumultuous week. Here

2:33

we go, folks, the story of the

2:35

assassination of Chris Haney.

2:39

T minus 10. The Thomas bombs dropped

2:41

on zero sheets. God save

2:43

the King. No black-white unity

2:45

till they're dispersed from black unity. Never

2:48

to go to war with one another again. And

2:50

lift off, and the subtle has cleared

2:53

the tower.

2:57

Justice, thank you very much for coming on the podcast.

3:00

Absolute pleasure. Thanks for having

3:02

me. Take us all back. I'm

3:04

old enough to remember this so clearly, but take

3:07

us back. Where were we in

3:09

the journey towards freedom in South Africa in April 1993?

3:13

How long had Nelson Mandela been out of prison, for

3:15

example? Then Mandela had been

3:17

out of prison for three years, and

3:20

Mandela comes out of jail. It's

3:22

February 1990. It's

3:25

a big thing for many South Africans,

3:27

for people across the world, people

3:29

like you who wanted

3:31

South Africa to change, to become

3:33

a

3:33

better citizen of the world.

3:36

And so he comes out, and

3:38

he says at his first speech, given

3:41

not far from where I am in Cape Town,

3:44

that F.W. de Clerc, the

3:46

president of South Africa at that time, is

3:49

a man of integrity, is someone

3:51

he can work with in the same breath.

3:54

F.W. de Clerc says, you know,

3:56

this is a man I can do business with. So

3:59

it starts off very quickly. Very nicely, it looks

4:01

like this is real cooperation.

4:05

But the negotiations don't take

4:07

off for the first year, 1990. The

4:10

second year, 91, 92. So

4:12

by 1993, the relationship

4:15

between the two men had frosted

4:17

over, it was very, very chilly. Mandela

4:20

accused de Tlerk of allowing political

4:23

violence to go on. de Tlerk

4:25

said Mandela is asking for too

4:27

much and so forth and so forth. So

4:30

by 1993,

4:31

South Africa was a country where,

4:34

for me as a young black

4:37

South African,

4:38

you went to work in the morning listening

4:40

to news bulletins talking

4:42

about how many people had been

4:45

murdered the night before in

4:47

political violence, in attacks on communities

4:49

and so forth. You went to sleep

4:52

scared about what the night would hold

4:54

and what the next day's reports would look

4:57

like.

4:57

And let's talk about Chris Haney.

5:00

Who was he and why was he important?

5:02

Chris Haney was young by many leaders

5:04

age at that point. He was 50 years old. Mandela

5:07

remember was over 70. He'd

5:10

been in jail for 27 years. Chris

5:12

Haney was a guy who was

5:14

born from a very poor family in the

5:17

Eastern Cape, had gone to the

5:19

local Catholic school, got

5:21

a scholarship to go to university,

5:24

studied Latin, English

5:27

history law. And by age 23,

5:30

he realized that something's not

5:33

right in this state. This apartheid

5:36

is a real affront to him,

5:39

to many black South Africans,

5:41

to many right thinking white South

5:43

Africans. And he joined

5:46

up with the ANC, went off to fight

5:48

with the ANC against apartheid.

5:51

By then the ANC was banned

5:53

from operating in South South Africa. This

5:56

is in the 1960s. So

5:58

he joined the ANC. fought one

6:01

battle against what was

6:03

then Rhodesian forces with

6:05

the intention of coming back into South

6:07

Africa. Got arrested,

6:09

spent about two years in prison,

6:12

then went back and joined the ANC

6:14

in exile in Zambia and

6:17

rose up in the organization, became the ANC's

6:19

chief of staff of the ANC's army, Un

6:22

Kontore Sizor, called Spear of the

6:24

Nation. He became a member

6:27

of the ANC's National Executive Committee.

6:30

He was much loved by young

6:32

people because

6:34

he told it as it is. He

6:36

was very uncompromising, where

6:39

many young people saw Mandela as

6:41

sort of giving in to the apartheid government

6:44

and its own positions. He

6:46

was, no, we're not going that way.

6:48

We prepared to fight for freedom. Why

6:51

do we have to explain our humanity to

6:53

many, many people? He was a very charming

6:55

man at the first meeting

6:58

between the ANC and the apartheid government

7:00

in March 1990. The

7:03

guys on the apartheid side were these

7:06

Oxford educated philosophers,

7:08

many of them. They'd studied Greek

7:12

and Latin and so forth and

7:14

so forth. Before he went and met

7:16

them, he kind of, you know, read up their

7:18

CVs, knew who they were, and

7:21

to them he was this ogre,

7:23

this terrorist, as they called him, this

7:25

person who wanted to destroy the

7:28

South African state, African Adam

7:30

and so forth. So he goes

7:33

there and he makes a beeline for

7:35

one of F.W. de Klerk's

7:38

deputies, ministers. He

7:40

knows that this guy did a PhD

7:43

with Oxford University, one of the colleges

7:46

on Sir Folkleys. So

7:48

he goes up to him and engages

7:50

him about this. This is the most

7:52

right wing, most hardcore individual

7:56

in de Klerk's cabinet

7:58

and delegation.

7:59

And And the minute Trieshany

8:02

finishes with him, the guy

8:05

is just patting his hands. He goes

8:07

to the clag and says, did you know

8:09

what that communist, terrorist

8:12

has been talking to me about? He's amazing.

8:14

He spoke to me about this and this and

8:16

this. And he was totally taken up

8:19

by him.

8:20

You know, he was that kind of guy when

8:22

he first met Archbishop Desmond

8:24

Tutu because Tutu was anti-communist.

8:28

So he goes up to him and says, hey, you know, before

8:30

we start, can we sing this song? I haven't

8:32

sung this hymn. I haven't

8:35

sung since 1963. And

8:39

he breaks into this an old,

8:42

old

8:43

South African hymn

8:45

that was composed by

8:47

a black South African

8:49

in the 1880s. And he

8:51

breaks into this song and he knows that

8:54

Tutu loves this hymn. And

8:56

Tutu just,

8:58

wow. And they became, you know,

9:00

Tutu gave the eulogy at Hany's

9:03

funeral. And that was part of the charm

9:06

that he had. By 1993,

9:08

surveys had been done in South Africa. He

9:11

was the most popular black leader after

9:13

Nelson Mandela. So that's who he was.

9:16

He was painted by the media as being

9:18

this radical and so forth. But I'll

9:20

tell you now, and I write this in my book, in

9:23

the months before Trieshany's

9:26

assassination, he'd been talking peace

9:28

on virtually every single

9:31

platform he had. He spoke about

9:34

this is how we make peace. Let's

9:36

work on this. This is how we can do it. And

9:38

so forth and so forth.

9:41

And how was he killed?

9:43

So Trieshany was,

9:46

as I explained, the head of the ANC

9:49

army, a member of the ANC's leadership,

9:51

one of the negotiators for

9:54

democracy in the ongoing peace

9:56

talks at the time. On the

9:59

weekend of 10. Then

10:01

April 1993, unlike

10:03

many others, so Nelson Mandela went

10:05

off to his home in the trans

10:07

guy, a very rural

10:09

part of South Africa, someone like

10:11

F.W. Declare, who was the president

10:14

at the time, went off to his

10:17

family farm in the desert in the Karun.

10:20

You know, South Africans are a bit like Americans

10:22

in the sense. Easter weekend is

10:25

like Thanksgiving in the US. People

10:28

in the cities just scap and go

10:30

off. It's very much family time.

10:33

So that was the weekend in

10:35

which virtually Johannesburg

10:38

was emptied out and the other

10:40

urban centers and people went off to

10:42

spend time with family. Chris Hanes

10:44

chose not to do that. He

10:47

had three bodyguards. He gave them

10:49

an instruction that, look, I'm just going to

10:52

be at home despite the danger

10:54

and all that. I'm giving you the weekend

10:57

off to go home and do what South

10:59

Africans do and that spend time

11:02

with family. When

11:04

this happened, he was at

11:06

home with his 13 year old daughter

11:09

and on the Saturday, the 10th

11:11

of April, he got up in the

11:13

morning. He was very much like Mandela.

11:16

He went off to buy newspapers. That

11:18

was almost like a ritual among

11:21

many of the ANC's leaders.

11:23

They were news junkies, many of them. So

11:26

he goes off and buys newspapers, comes

11:29

back to his home, but

11:31

he'd been stopped by a

11:34

man who had been keeping

11:36

him under surveillance for weeks

11:38

and perhaps even months. This

11:41

man had gotten up in the morning, very

11:43

early,

11:44

made his way to Chris Hanes' home,

11:46

saw him leave to go and get

11:48

his newspapers, followed him

11:50

to the local shopping center,

11:53

saw him buy the newspapers

11:56

and knew that, okay, he's going back home.

11:59

So he took a look at his own.

11:59

shot cards and got to Tris

12:02

Hany's house

12:03

before him.

12:04

As Tris Hany drove into

12:06

his home, the man got out of his

12:08

car, followed him to just behind

12:11

Tris Hany's car. As Tris

12:13

Hany got out of his car, he called out

12:15

to him and said, Mr. Hany, Tris

12:17

Hany turned around, looked at him

12:19

and the man shot him twice in the chest

12:22

and twice in the head and killed him. Who

12:25

was this man? Was he a lone wolf or was

12:27

he working as part of conspiracy? This

12:29

man

12:30

on the day worked alone

12:33

from what we can gather. In the

12:35

1970s and early 80s, South

12:38

Africa, the apartheid government

12:40

in South Africa recruited

12:43

white people and they recruited

12:45

particularly white people

12:48

from the Soviet countries.

12:51

This man, his name

12:53

was Janus Wallace, came from

12:56

Poland and with his family, they

12:59

detested communism and

13:02

the apartheid government essentially,

13:04

if you professed, whether you did

13:07

or not, but if you professed to hate

13:09

communism and believe in capitalism,

13:12

they'd smooth the way and give

13:14

you papers and allow you to

13:16

live in South Africa. And so that

13:19

was how Janus Wallace ended up in

13:21

South Africa. He got here

13:24

and he started flirting with

13:26

and got associated with the right wing in South

13:29

Africa, joined up with

13:32

neo-Nazi groupings like the Afrikaner

13:35

Wirztan Bevireng, which is the Afrikaner

13:37

resistance movement, which is ultra-conservative

13:41

movement. He got involved with the

13:44

conservative party of South Africa.

13:47

He signed up with them. He signed up with

13:49

some UK-linked pro-Nazi

13:52

groupings and together

13:55

with a member of parliament, a conservative

13:57

member of parliament, hatched the plot.

14:00

to kill Chris Haney. So

14:03

on that Saturday, when he followed

14:05

Chris Haney to his house, he

14:07

was carrying a gun that had been given by

14:09

this conservative member of

14:11

parliament, Clav W. Lewis. And

14:14

it was basically their plan

14:17

that if they assassinated the

14:20

most popular leader after Nelson

14:22

Mandela, they would set off

14:25

riots, they would set off mayhem

14:27

and chaos. And South Africa's

14:30

path to democracy would

14:32

be stymied by the fact that

14:35

negotiations would end or would

14:38

stop. Their plan in fact

14:40

explicitly was that the

14:42

army and conservative elements

14:45

within the apartheid government would say,

14:47

why are we discussing all this? Why are

14:49

we talking to F.W. de Tlerk

14:52

and the ANC? And they would take

14:54

de Tlerk out of power in

14:56

a coup d'etat, in a military coup and

14:59

install someone else and say, stop

15:02

no more democracy talks,

15:05

no more talk of non-racialism and

15:07

South Africa continues pretty

15:10

much as it was before 1990.

15:13

Now you and I might sit here and say, that

15:16

sounds like such a crazy

15:19

plan, but actually the

15:21

assassination of Chris

15:23

Haney began and we can talk

15:25

about this setting off those

15:28

conditions for

15:29

chaos and mayhem that they had hoped

15:32

for.

15:34

You listen to Dan Snow's History Hit, we're

15:36

talking about the assassination of

15:39

Nelson Mandela's number two,

15:41

Chris Haney.

15:42

More after this.

15:46

We're about to witness the first coronation

15:49

at Westminster Abbey in 70 years. And

15:52

Gone Medieval from History Hit is your perfect

15:54

companion for the event. From the earliest

15:56

English coronation records. To what the Royal

15:59

regalia used to call it. than the ceremony means. From

16:01

the surprising origins of the recognition

16:03

part of the service. To the lavish banquets

16:06

that took place afterwards. I'm

16:08

Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Cat Jarman.

16:11

And on Gone Medieval in April, we'll be exploring

16:13

the medieval origins of this feast of pageantry.

16:16

We'll try to pick out the key moments

16:18

for you to watch and trace their origins

16:20

back into the mists of time. We've

16:23

got some great guests and fascinating

16:25

topics to lift the lid on a moment

16:27

when, let's face it, people all

16:29

around the world will have gone medieval.

16:32

Subscribe and follow Gone Medieval from History

16:34

Hit, wherever you get your podcasts.

16:49

Because it did cause a huge outcry,

16:52

right? And there were some riots. So

16:54

what did it lead to? And was it a

16:56

rather different outcome to the one that

16:59

this shadowy MP and

17:01

this Polish assassin hoped for? It

17:04

did set off some pretty

17:07

scary scenes.

17:10

It was a Saturday and I can

17:12

assure you, I was a young reporter.

17:15

In fact, it was my first day working

17:17

as a reporter at the newspaper

17:19

called The Star, which is still going. I

17:22

went out to Dawn Park to the suburb

17:24

where Chris Haney lived. And

17:26

within hours as I was making

17:29

my way back to the office, it

17:31

was chaos on the streets. There were

17:34

barricades set up in townships.

17:37

There were blockades of roads.

17:39

There were attacks on government infrastructure,

17:43

molotov cocktails thrown at buses.

17:46

That day, the right wing felt so

17:48

emboldened that the head

17:50

office of the South African Communist

17:52

Party was shot at

17:54

by armed right wingers. There were

17:56

taunting particular of black

17:59

people by right wing.

19:33

around

20:00

him. I think F.W. de

20:02

Klerk played some role in it, although

20:05

his actions later on became called

20:08

controversial. What happened

20:10

on the day itself was that Nelson

20:13

Mandela started calling people when he got the

20:15

message at about 10 30 a.m.

20:17

that honey had been met. F.W. de

20:19

Klerk got the message about

20:22

the same time.

20:23

And what happened

20:25

is that the two men called

20:27

each other. And the first one to get through

20:30

was de Klerk got through to Mandela.

20:33

And they spoke for about 30 minutes that day.

20:36

F.W. de Klerk explicitly

20:38

said

20:39

to Mandela,

20:40

there is nothing I can do here. There's

20:43

nothing young angry

20:46

black people who regard me as the

20:48

enemy

20:49

will not listen to me if I go

20:51

up and say,

20:52

let's stop what's going on.

20:55

He said, I don't have the credibility.

20:58

I don't have the power to

21:00

do anything about this. I can call out the

21:02

army,

21:03

but it won't stop what we are witnessing

21:05

now.

21:06

In that conversation, the two men agree

21:09

that Mandela will do what

21:11

at that time was an extraordinary

21:14

thing. And it would be

21:15

to address the nation as

21:18

though he was the president of the country.

21:20

So for the first time, a man

21:22

who'd been banned

21:24

from

21:25

speaking to South Africans from even

21:27

being quoted, remember, you'd get

21:29

a five year jail sentence in South Africa

21:32

if from the UK, for example, you'd sent

21:35

me a quote by Mandela and

21:37

I was found to have it on me. That was

21:39

an automatic five year jail sentence. But

21:42

in 1993, F.W. said

21:44

I will make the way and I'll make sure

21:46

that the public broadcaster understands

21:49

that this is a matter of national importance

21:52

and that you have to go on

21:54

and speak to the nation. Nelson Mandela

21:56

said that's what has to happen. So

21:58

that was the first act. and

22:00

a very powerful one,

22:02

that Mandela went

22:04

on television that evening and

22:06

gave a speech asking the nation to

22:09

become, to focus on

22:11

the negotiations, to try

22:14

and assuage the anger that

22:16

was spreading through South Africa. So

22:18

that was the first step. But actually

22:21

that speech didn't work out quite as

22:23

well as both men thought

22:25

it would. But that was the first

22:27

step in a whole continuum of actions

22:31

that took place and that I believe

22:33

helped stop South Africa fall into

22:36

war.

22:37

And democratic elections took

22:39

place almost exactly a year later.

22:42

So do you think that this sort of kickstarted

22:44

the process again?

22:46

Yes, I do. I think this is one of

22:48

those for you Dan and

22:50

history buffs. Many of us look

22:53

at South Africa and say, okay, there were the

22:55

negotiations and so forth. Those negotiations,

22:58

as I said earlier, were not going very

23:00

well by 1993. The

23:02

conservative elements in the apartheid

23:05

government were emboldened. They

23:07

wanted to essentially bring

23:09

the whole thing to a halt. The ANC

23:12

and Nelson Mandela were frustrated and

23:14

so forth. So in that week,

23:16

Nelson Mandela, Cyril Ramaphosa,

23:19

his team said, there are two things that

23:22

we need now to push for. And

23:24

the first was a transitional executive

23:26

council. And the transitional executive

23:29

council was basically the ANC

23:31

saying, we cannot have a free

23:33

election when the government

23:36

is the referee and the player. It's in charge

23:38

of the army. It's in charge of the broadcasting

23:42

body. It's in charge of all elements

23:44

of society. We need an

23:46

independent body to oversee the

23:50

few months between an agreement

23:52

and the actual election. The second

23:55

one was, let's have an election

23:57

date. Let's agree on it.

24:00

and the rest of it we can talk

24:02

about it later. When things got

24:04

really

24:05

hairy in that week,

24:07

FWD declared called a meeting of

24:10

what was called the State Security Council

24:13

in South Africa. The State Security

24:15

Council was essentially the

24:18

security cards of the state. They

24:21

excluded everyone in the so-called

24:23

soft portfolios in cabinet. Under

24:26

apartheid, they basically ran

24:29

South Africa on a very violent,

24:32

if you will, basis.

24:34

But they held a meeting on

24:37

the Wednesday after Kriszany's murder.

24:39

There were some had men, there were no

24:41

women in that meeting. Many of them had

24:44

committed all kinds of human

24:46

rights abuses. And they sat

24:48

in there, and in that meeting, two things

24:51

happened. They said to Roonf

24:53

Meyer, who was the chief negotiator,

24:56

that tell the ANC that

24:58

we will agree to a transitional executive

25:01

council. In that meeting, they

25:03

said, look, we can't give the ANC

25:05

an election date, but we are

25:07

prepared to sit down and agree on one

25:10

with all the other parties involved. So

25:13

April 27, that people like me

25:16

talk about as the first time I voted,

25:18

and Freedom Day for South Africa, directly

25:22

came from that day. And a few, in

25:24

fact, six weeks after that meeting,

25:27

and after that accession by the apartheid

25:29

government, a date was set,

25:32

and that was April 27. And

25:34

in my view, it was the events

25:36

of that week that

25:38

pushed those two events to

25:41

happen, and that led to

25:43

essentially April 27 taking place.

25:47

So the assassination

25:49

had the opposite effect of the one intended

25:51

by the perpetrators.

25:53

Yes, today South Africans

25:55

talk about Triesrani in very romantic

25:58

terms. We like to...

27:50

on

28:00

to peace and it includes

28:02

nuggets like what happened with that

28:05

extraordinary meeting of the security threats

28:08

under the national party and how

28:10

they

28:11

folded essentially to the push

28:13

for democracy. It's an amazing

28:15

story. Thank you very much, Justice Malala, for coming on and talking

28:18

about it. Thanks so much. I appreciate

28:20

being here. Thank you,

28:21

Dan.

28:30

Thank you.

28:36

Hey folks, it's the invitation you've

28:38

all been waiting for. I'm sure.

28:41

Come on holiday with me. Come on

28:43

a history holiday with me. Let's

28:45

do it. I am going to Normandy

28:48

between the 2nd and the 6th of June this

28:50

year, which is the anniversary of D-Day,

28:53

obviously. I'm going to be your expert guide.

28:55

Visit historyhit.com slash

28:57

trips and subscribers to History Hit

28:59

TV get a special offer. It's going

29:01

to be awesome. Come along. historyhit.com slash

29:04

trips, UK only.