Two convicted far-right assassins confessed yesterday to murdering the South African communist leader, Chris Hani, four years ago, saying they feared he would impose an oppressive eastern bloc style regime in the country.
Mr Janusz Walusz and Mr Clive Derby-Lewis, who are serving life jail terms for the murder on April 10th, 1993, quashed speculation they were part of a larger conspiracy, saying they acted alone.
The two, however, said they were motivated by South Africa's most powerful far-right group of the time, the Conservative Party (CP), which they said was "at war" with black liberation groups.
Mr Derby-Lewis - a former senior CP leader and MP - and Mr Walusz, a party member, both denied guilt during their trial, but have since applied for amnesty to South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
The commission, which is investigating human rights abuses carried out during the apartheid era, has the power to grant amnesty to perpetrators who fully admit their guilt and can prove political motives.
In statements to the commission, Mr Walusz, a Polish immigrant, said he and Mr Derby-Lewis carried out the murder "alone", disputing reports it was masterminded by the National Party government then still in power.
South African newspapers have also speculated that some of Hani's own allies in the now-ruling African National Congress (ANC) may have been involved.
Hani, an enormously popular leader, was shot in the head outside his home near Johannesburg a year before the elections in April 1994 which swept President Nelson Mandela's ANC and its main ally, Hani's South African Communist Party (SACP), to power.
The murder nearly provoked a race war in the turbulent period before the election. Mr Walusz said he emigrated to South Africa because he believed it was "governed by Afrikaners who would never capitulate to communism, the latter ideology being by definition godless and thus anti-Christian".
Several hundred protesters gathered outside the hearing in Pretoria City Hall, singing liberation songs and carrying signs saying "Go and rot in jail, you murderers" and "No amnesty to Hani killers". Among those leading the singing was the popular premier of the central Gauteng province, Mr Tokyo Sexwale, a close friend of Hani, and Mr Mandela's ex-wife, the controversial activist Ms Winnie Madikizela-Mandela.