Amnesty Hearings — Pretoria — UNKNOWN

JEREMY CRONIN: The range of audiences he was addressing was very wide indeed.  Again, in the weeks before his assassination I remember him addressing here in Pretoria, a group of Afrikaans speaking White business people who'd invited him to come and explain his views and perspectives for South Africa.
	We quote in this particular document form speeches that he gave to the Black business community and he also appeared regularly on radio news programmes and television programmes watched presumably, by the ...[indistinct] audience.

GEORGE BIZOS: Were those sufficiently widely published for at least those having a genuine interest in the political constitutional problems of the country, to be aware of them?

JEREMY CRONIN: Well, I can imagine that there would be people in our country whose minds were so incredibly narrow that their reading might not have gone beyond The Patriot, but I think that anyone vaguely interested in what was happening in South Africa would have engaged in reading a range of newspapers, watching news, listening to radio programmes.
	This was a time of heightened political activity in South Africa and anyone with a remote interest in politics would have been overwhelmed in any case by the amount of information that was flowing through the mass media.

GEORGE BIZOS: Was the President's Council at this time, still in existence as part of the legislative process in the country?

JEREMY CRONIN: I personally didn't confess to ...[indistinct] following the career of the President's Council too closely but my impression is that it was functioning at this time.

GEORGE BIZOS: We have been told that next to Mr Mandela, he was probably the most popular person in the country, would you agree with that?

JEREMY CRONIN: Well, some of the poles certainly suggested that - opinion poles suggested that Chris Hani was - after Nelson Mandela, the second most popular political figure in our country - obviously with his support drawn overwhelmingly from he Black community, one can debate the accuracy of poles but I think no-one can debate the huge popularity that he enjoyed.

GEORGE BIZOS: We have also been told that he was assassinated in order to bring about chaos in the country -he was assassinated, do you know any steps that may have been taken to avoid the intended chaos from coming into being?

JEREMY CRONIN: Well, the leaderships of the South African Communist Party, the ANC, COSATU and the broader mass democratic movement - apart from being hugely saddened and aghast at what had happened with the assassination, were incredibly worried about what might eventuate as a result of this assassination.  	There was a deep concern that those who were seeking precisely to derail the negotiations process and therefore delay the advent of non-racial democracy in our country, might succeed.  The popular outcry within our constituency was huge and I think one gets some sense of it - if I could quote briefly from page eight of the document that I've submitted, it's the last paragraph ...[intervention]

GEORGE BIZOS: Just before you quote it, is this a letter which was received from a member of your Party who resigned because of your efforts to avoid the chaos?

JEREMY CRONIN: That's right, this is a quotation, in fact it's - yes, it's a quotation from a letter by a certain Theo Malherbe who - until May of 1993, had been the Secretary of the South African Communist Party's Cape Town branch and he was one of thousand's of people Chris Hani's funeral here in Johannesburg and he was outraged that the leadership of the ANC led alliance, had not used this opportunity of mass anger to call for an insurrection and he wrote us this letter - I won't read all of it, I'll read parts of it.  Theo Malherbe writes"
"In the night vigil at Hani's funeral, all the regions were calling for revolutionary mass actions/wall with the exception of one of two regions.  The leadership is out of touch with these sentiments, who are they representing, how can national ignore regions"?
And then towards - about the seventh last line:
"Chris Hani's funeral was an occasion to prepare for insurrection but our leadership failed.  Their demand for arms is not a political response but a political response to low-intensity warfare.  I will not be a member of the Communist Party that sees negotiation as the only option"
We actually published this letter later in the year - in our official Party organ, the African Communist.  We felt we should be should do so because it reflected - at the time we felt we should do so, open up this debate because it reflected a powerful feeling that existed within the ranks of active Party members and we believe also active ANC members as well.  
	We disagreed with the sentiment and the individual left the Party as a result but it was a barometer of popular feeling and I think, gives an indication of how much the work of the leadership of the alliance was cut out in this period - in the days and weeks that followed the assassination, to get control of the situation to ensure that our mass base did not give in to the provocation and that this assassination was intended to be and was in fact but it was a difficult battle.

GEORGE BIZOS: Was Mr Mandela and Mr ...[indistinct] Sekwale given access to the electronic media to constantly call for calm and not to succumb to the provocation as a result of the murder of Mr Hani?

JEREMY CRONIN: That's correct, I remember hearing a comment two weeks later - not a comment, it was published in the newspaper, saying that in that period - with our country literally on the brink of spiralling back into a situation of civil war, that is was only the ANC leadership and the alliance leadership that was able to rescue the country from the calamity that was staring us all collectively in the face.
	And sadly - ironically but for the first time in that period, the ANC and alliance leadership had more access to the media - to the so-called then public broadcast of the SATV, than we'd had before.  And I think that was a testament to the recognition that unless the leadership of the alliance stepped into that dangerous void, the situation could indeed spin out of control.

GEORGE BIZOS: Have you any personal knowledge as to what extent the leadership of the ANC and it's allies put all other business aside immediately after the murder, in order to avoid the intended result of chaos?