Janusz Walus, who assassinated SACP leader Chris Hani nearly 30 years ago, will serve his sentence ‘to the fullest’ in SA, the Department of Home Affairs said yesterday.

This follows several days of high level talks after Chief Justice Raymond Zondo’s landmark ruling granting Walus parole. He ordered that Walus must be released within 10 days.

Zondo set aside Minister of Justice & Correctional Services Ronald Lamola's March 2020 rejection of the Polish immigrant’s application for parole. 

‘The letter addressed to Mr Walus, and a certificate of exemption, has been forwarded to the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services to be delivered to Mr Walus,’ the department said in a statement.

It noted that the letter set out the exceptional circumstances requiring the granting of the exemption ‘which, inter alia, include the fact that it would be in the interests of justice that Walus serves his sentence to the fullest, including parole in the RSA’.

The Mail & Guardian reports that the Constitutional Court ruling posed a dilemma for Lamola, who took the 2020 decision to deny parole which was successfully challenged in the apex court.

His office believed that it would be impossible to impose parole terms in Poland if Walus were deported, and this would effectively leave him a free man, subject to no further punishment.

Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi yesterday took the same view, saying media reports suggested the Polish embassy believed no parole conditions would apply in Poland because the SA Constitution did not.

For the government, this was an unpalatable proposition, given the legal opposition of the SACP to his release and the popular outcry the ruling triggered last week, with Hani’s widow Limpho describing it as ‘diabolical’.

President Cyril Ramaphosa also weighed in, terming it ‘very disappointing’.

Full Mail & Guardian report