Amnesty Hearings — Pretoria — UNKNOWN

GEORGE BIZOS: It has been suggested that Mr Hani continued with the armed struggle after the two important minutes that were signed between the liberation movements and the National Party Government, can you tell us what you know of Mr Hani's activities and whether or not - as has been suggested in some document of unknown origin, that he was building up a private army and was not a bona fides participant in the negotiation and reconciliation process?

JEREMY CRONIN: Well, I think that the first point to be made in that regard is that Chris Hani had certainly served actively and auspiciously in the ranks of Umkhonto weSizwe, he was very proud of his track record and many people in South Africa admired him for his military record in the ranks of Umkhonto weSizwe and as a consequence of that he rose to the rank of Chief of Staff.
	He was the number effectively, not the number - well, number three because the President of ANC was head of MK.  So, he was not actually number one in MK but he was certainly a very senior member of Umkhonto weSizwe, the armed wing of the ANC.  
	But he was also a very loyal member of Umkhonto weSizwe and with the opening up of the negotiations process - with the unbanning of the ANC and the South African Communist Party, the armed struggle - there was a  cease-fire almost immediately. And then in August of 1990 with the signing of the Pretoria Minute, the ANC formally suspended the armed struggle and Chris Hani was part and parcel of that process. 
	After August 1990, he remained on - within the command structures of MK, as the Chief of Staff and his role was to assist with the integration process or the impending integration process to regularise the situation in South Africa, so his role - far from launching some separate army in exile, was to see the well-being of the returning MK cadres who were returning from exile or who were emerging from prison or exile - or from underground, and to ensure that they were readied for an integration process which we knew would come as a result of the negotiations process.
	In December 1991 - as I mentioned earlier, he was elected as General Secretary of the Communist Party and this then becomes his full-time deployment within the broader ANC alliance and so from that point he ceased to be the Chief of Staff of MK.  And I think again this gives an indication that his priorities at this point were not military or be it even military on route to demobilisation or reintegration into a regularised Government force.
	As for the story about some new fangled notion of a new People's Party or whatever which we heard about or some kind of renegade army, we were aware of disinformation stories circulating - as I recall, some of those stories emerged in about 1992, Chris Hani himself immediately denied them.  And as far as we can tell, they were part of a STRATCOM disinformation campaign directed at Hani and other leaders within the ANC alliance.

GEORGE BIZOS: Did everyone in the liberation movements embrace the idea of a negotiated settlement or were there groups that were sceptical about it Mr Cronin?

JEREMY CRONIN: No, I think it would be fair to say that the broader constituency on the ground of the ANC and of the South African Communist Party - certainly large sections of them, were often extremely sceptical about the negotiations process.
	I think that the scepticism had a great deal to do with the low-intensity conflict that was going on with townships in particular - many townships.  I remember personally addressing meetings - SACP branch meetings of COSATU shop steward locals.   
	I was one of the people involved in the negotiations process and I remember having to answer repeatedly, questions from this base constituency.  People would say: "You are having tea and biscuits with FW de Klerk, we are dying like flies in the townships, how can you suspend the armed struggle, how can you negotiate with the enemy" and so a great deal of our time was spent on persuading our constituency of the importance of the negotiations process.
	And I think that probably the leading personality in this process of trying to win over the ANC constituency to the negotiations process, was Chris Hani himself.  He came with impeccable credentials as a militant, as someone that - when the armed struggle had been under way, had fought very courageously and so he used those credentials precisely to say - and there's documentary evidence in the submission that we've made, to show that he's saying to many, many audiences - diverse audiences but not least to township audiences, that we must give peace a chance, that we must take the negotiations very seriously.  
	And above all he kept repeating: "Do not fall into the provocation trap, those who don't want to see majority rule - a non-racial dispensation in our country, are trying to provoke us into restarting an armed struggle, we must not allow that to happen".  So, I think that was the general position of the leadership but in the face certainly, of scepticism from rank and file members.

GEORGE BIZOS: Do you know how much of his time Mr Chris Hani spent in trying to persuade the constituencies to support the negotiation process?

JEREMY CRONIN: I would say that this is what he spent the last three years of his life essentially doing.  I mentioned that his office adjoined in the Johannesburg head office of the Communist Party but he was rarely there, he was out on the road, he was addressing village meetings, rallies, branch meetings and so on, throughout the length and breadth of the country.  He was indefatigable in this respect, he was one of the most energetic leaders that we've had.

GEORGE BIZOS: What was his attitude to the peace process that was being organised at the time throughout the country - ...[indistinct] to the National Peace Accord?