On the anniversary of Chris Hani’s tragic death, the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association publishes a report on the glorification of the racist killer Janusz Walus. On 10 April 1993, Walus assassinated Hani, a leading South African anti-apartheid activist and a close associate of Nelson Mandela. In December 2024, Walus landed in Warsaw, Poland. The far right has created a peculiar cult around the killer.
Walus emigrated to South Africa from Poland in 1981. He became involved in the activities of a neo-Nazi organisation called Afrikaner Resistance Movement (Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging, AWB). By murdering Hani, he tried to stop democratic changes aimed at dismantling the system of racial segregation. He was sentenced to death, but his sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. In 2022, he was granted parole but was required to remain in South Africa for an additional two years.
During his deportation flight back to Poland, Walus was accompanied by Grzegorz Braun, a Member of the European Parliament and candidate in the 2025 presidential election in Poland, an infamous antisemite, charged with several hate-related crimes.
On his return to Poland, Walus confirmed his attachment to the ideology of racism and his complete lack of remorse for the murder he had committed. In one of his YouTube interviews, he argued his case firmly by exclaiming ‘We had to eliminate someone’.
According to Rafal Pankowski, co-founder of the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association, Professor at Warsaw-based Collegium Civitas, and Rotary Peace Fellow at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda: ‘Walus is downright proud of his crime. He has become a symbol of the internationalization of violent racist extremism. It is terrifying that he has become a role model to so many’.
The report of the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association documents public expressions of support for Walus upon his arrival to Poland made by Members of Parliament and other figures.
The appreciation for Walus was demonstrated during the football fans’ annual pilgrimage to Czestochowa (Jasna Gora) – the most important Catholic monastery in Poland – in January as well as on banners during football games and on the street walls in several cities. Walus’s supporters announced multiple fundraiser initiatives on his behalf, and the far-right organisation The Patriots of Bydgoszcz (Bydgoscy Patrioci) celebrated his birthday with a cake and a banner describing the killer as a ‘Lone White Wolf’.
Numerous online expressions of support for the racist murderer were reported by the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association to the administrators of Facebook, Twitter/X and YouTube. Dr Anna Tatar of the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association informs, ‘Only Facebook reacted and removed most of such content reported by us. Twitter/X did not delete anything. Coincidentally, its owner Elon Musk himself originates from South Africa’. YouTube also failed to remove the reported videos praising Walus and his crime.
The report includes an appendix with the words of Ewa Walus, the daughter of Janusz Walus, who contacted the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association, ‘I have never shared my father’s views. I think that proclaiming such harmful, racist and neo-Nazi statements is outrageous, but above all, it is dangerous. Because we see how the world is getting radicalised’.
The ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association is an independent civil society organisation founded in Warsaw in 1996. It has campaigned against racism, antisemitism, and xenophobia, for peace, intercultural dialogue and human rights across the world. It has actively participated in civil society networks, including the Global Alliance Against Digital Hate and Extremism (GAADHE), the International Network Against Cyber Hate (INACH), and the Alliance Against Genocide.
Rafal Pankowski (‘NEVER AGAIN Association’) with Lester Kiewit about the welcome of Chris Hani’s unrepentant killer Janusz Walus by the far-right in Poland:
Report ‘«We had to eliminate someone». A Hero’s Welcome For An Apartheid Killer’ (full version in PDF file):
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