SOUTH AFRICA’S government vowed yesterday to appeal against the decision to grant parole to communist leader Chris Hani’s assassin.

Justice Minister Michael Masutha said Judge Nicoline Janse van Nieuwenhuizen’s March 10 decision to free Polish-born far-right killer Janusz Walus was a mistake.

The judge’s ruling was issued a month before the 23rd anniversary of the then South African Communist Party (SACP) general secretary’s murder on April 10 1993.

His accomplice Clive Derby-Lewis, a former MP for the extremist Conservative Party, now defunct, was freed last year on the grounds that he had terminal cancer.

The judge’s acceptance of Mr Walus’s apology to the Hani family — which they rejected — and comments suggesting that it was time to “forget and move on” sparked outrage from the SACP, African National Congress (ANC) and trade union federation Cosatu.

Mr Walus’s lawyer Julian Knight said he would ask the Gauteng province court to approve his client’s release tomorrow, even if the minister was granted leave to appeal.

South Africa’s liberation movement has always opposed freedom for the pair as they have refused to divulge before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission where the order for the assassination ultimately came from.

The killing almost wrecked negotiations towards South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994 and pushed the country to the brink of civil war.

The SACP and the Young Communist League welcomed the appeal yesterday.

SACP spokesman Alex Mashilo said: “Walus remains an unrepentant murderer.

“He does not show adequate remorse. He has not demonstrated any understanding of the enormity of the murder he has committed together with his accomplice.”