The SACP leader who kept the revolutionary flame alive after laying down arms
“We are negotiating to create better conditions for socialism. I am a communist.” — Interview shortly before his assassination, 1993
General Secretary of the South African Communist Party and Chief of Staff of Umkhonto we Sizwe, he led the left wing of the liberation movement from armed struggle through the turn to negotiations. His assassination by a far-right immigrant in 1993 nearly derailed South Africa's democratic transition, but instead galvanized the final agreement on the 1994 elections.
Career Timeline
- 1957Joined ANC Youth League at age 15
- 1959–1961Studied English, Latin and classics at Fort Hare University
- 1961Joined the South African Communist Party
- 1962Joined Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK)
- 1963Arrested; fled to Lesotho; adopted the name Chris
- 1967–1969Zimbabwean War of Liberation: joint MK-ZIPRA operations
- 1969Co-signed the 'Hani Memorandum' criticizing ANC/MK leadership
- 1974Elected to ANC National Executive Committee
- 1982MK Chief of Staff; directed guerrilla operations from Lusaka
- 1990Returned permanently to South Africa after ANC unbanning
- 1991.12Elected SACP General Secretary, succeeding Joe Slovo
- 1993.4.10Shot dead outside his Boksburg home by a far-right immigrant
The Hani Memorandum (1969)
After the failure of the Wankie and Sipolilo campaigns in 1967, MK's Luthuli Detachment, tasked with infiltrating South Africa via Rhodesia, suffered heavy losses. Chris Hani was arrested in Botswana, imprisoned for over a year, and returned to Lusaka in late 1968. The ANC leadership held no debriefing and offered no official welcome. In early 1969 Hani and six fellow MK cadres drafted what became known as the 'Hani Memorandum.'
The document delivered an uncompromising critique of the exiled leadership, Joe Modise (MK commander), Moses Kotane, and others, charging them with complacency, corruption, careerism, and a growing gap between commanders and rank-and-file combatants. Hani wrote that "the ANC is the vanguard of the revolutionary struggle in South Africa and it is strange that its leaders have not been obliged to take the M.K. oath." The memorandum warned against overreliance on diplomatic channels and called for re-radicalising the armed struggle.
The memorandum exposed a deep crisis within the ANC and helped precipitate the watershed 1969 Morogoro Conference, which restructured the organisation and opened full membership to non-Africans. It was not a mere expression of discontent but a principled intervention over the political character of the armed struggle and internal democracy. Decades later, ANC Secretary-General Gwede Mantashe, speaking at Hani's birthplace in 2008, invoked the memorandum as the originating moment in a dialectic of party renewal running from Morogoro through Kabwe (1985) to Polokwane (2007), confirming its enduring and contested legacy.