Retired South African High Court Judge Chris Nicholson has cited EIR as an “authoritative” source on the British role in the 1993 assassination of African National Congress leader Chris Hani, second only to Nelson Mandela in popularity and a leading candidate to succeed him as president. Nicholson made the assertion in an April 12 interview with BizNews Radio, marking the anniversary of Hani’s death. He draws on his 2025 book, Who Really Killed Chris Hani? which quotes at length from EIR's May 14, 1993 article, “Did the British Kill Hani?” to substantiate the book’s thesis that Hani’s assassination was ordered by British Intelligence with the concurrence of other Western intelligence agencies.
Nicholson asserts that Hani, who served as General Secretary of the South African Communist Party, was killed because he was prepared to implement in full the 1955 Freedom Charter of the African National Congress (ANC), which called for sharing the wealth of the nation with all the people of South Africa, thus endangering the massive holdings of British-controlled mining interests, and above all Anglo American Corporation’s dominance in gold and diamond mining. He further argues that Hani was incorruptible (all the more reason for his assassination), and that his death has enabled an organized, massive corruption and embezzlement operation now destroying the country while maintaining the power of international mining companies and financiers.
The 1993 EIR article linked the two individuals convicted of the assassination to two British intelligence-linked organizations, the Stallard Foundation and the South African Institute for Maritime Research (SAIMR), connections that Nicholson further substantiates in his nearly 400-page book. EIR argued that Hani’s assassination had a decisive impact on the negotiations then underway between the apartheid government and the ANC to dismantle the racist system and establish majority rule. Hani’s assassination assured the British a settlement that preserved their domination of the South African economy that continues to this day.
The interview and the book arrive in the midst of a major domestic fight against state capture by British-controlled drug cartels. Last July, KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Police Commissioner Lt. Gen. Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi held a press conference charging that the then Minister of Police, Senzo Mchunu, had illegally closed down a police task force investigating no less than 121 cases of political murder. The national outcry in reaction to the press conference led to the convening by President Cyril Ramaphosa of the Madlanga Commission headed by retired Justice Mbuyiseni Madlanga. Its hearings, broadcast live on national television, have exposed a criminal network penetrating almost all levels of government and responsible for massive corruption, narcotics distribution, and assassinations that have been destroying the country.
