THE assassination of Chris Hani in 1993 has shifted centre stage once more, as his killers prepare to seek amnesty from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
The African National Congress, in whose ranks the popular communist served as a military commander and political leader, has reaffirmed its belief that Mr Hani was the victim of "a broader conspiracy" and urged the commission to defer consideration of the amnesty application until a full investigation has been conducted.
Two men were convicted for the assassination of Mr Hani Janusz Waluz, a Polish immigrant with a fanatical hatred of communism, and Clive Derby Lewis, a prominent member of the Conservative Party and sympathiser with the neo fascist Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging.
The ANC's reiteration of its belief that Mr Hani was the victim of a wider conspiracy was prompted in part by an article published in the weekly Mail and Guardian.
Quoting from two secret military intelligence documents, the article states that the department of military intelligence had foreknowledge of the murder and, more startlingly, that elements within the ANC's department of intelligence and security were also aware that Mr Hani was being targeted by assassins.
The documents are based on information fed to a military intelligence operative by a double agent working for the ANC.
The rekindled controversy was fuelled further when Ms Winnie Madikizela Mandela, President Nelson Mandela's former wife, reaffirmed her belief that unnamed members in the ANC, who were jealous or fearful of Mr Hani, may have had a hand in his murder. "It is hard to believe it was the work of the right alone," Ms Madikizela Mandela said in response to the article. "You must look at home, too."
The ANC has since "taken note" of the allegations that its members might have been implicated in Mr Hani's assassination and conducted an investigation to establish whether the double agent had ever worked for its department. "We have drawn a blank," it states.
But the ANC believes that Mr Hani was the victim of a conspiracy and insists there can be no question of an amnesty for his killers until a full investigation is conducted.
Mr Jeremy Cronin, secretary general of the South African Communist Party, told The Irish Times that the police investigation was narrowly focused on the immediate conspirators. He noted that the murder weapon had been stolen from a defence force armoury by the Orde Boerevolk, a front organisation for military intelligence, before being passed on to Waluz.
AFP adds from Johannesburg: Apartheid era scientists in South Africa secretly tested deadly chemical substances on humans to find "medical solutions to political problems," the Star newspaper reported yesterday, quoting military sources.
Dr Wouster Basson (46), head of the Seventh Battalion, was arrested at the end of January and admitted at his bail hearing that he carried out scientific research that was later used in covert military operations.
However, Dr Basson insisted his work "was not aimed at killing people, but to cause fear and to decrease the fighting capabilities of the enemy."
Thallium, a deadly poisonous heavy metal, was apparently tested on South African soldiers in Angola and on former Namibian SWAPO separatists. A single capsule mixed with food is capable of killing between 20 and 30 people.
According to the newspaper, there were even plans to use thallium to contaminate medication administered to Mr Mandela during his final years in prison at Pollsmoor, near Cape Town, in 1982-88.