20 Things you don’t know about Chris Hani

1.  Chris Hani was born Martin Thembisile Hani

2.  Chris Hani was born on 28 June 1942 in the small town of Cofimvaba in a rural village called kuSabalele Transkei

3.  Chris Hani was the fifth of six children

4.  Chris Hani attended Lovedale school and later studied modern and classical literature at the University of Fort Hare

5.  At age 15 Chris Hani joined the ANC Youth League

6.  Chris Hani went into exile in Lesotho in 1963

7.  Chris Hani was the leader of the South African Communist Party and chief of staff of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress

8.  In 1969 Chris Hani produced and signed, with six others, the ‘Hani Memorandum’ which was strongly critical of the leadership of Joe Modise

9.  By 1982, Chris Hani had become prominent enough that he was the target of assassination attempts, and he eventually moved to the ANC’s headquarters in Lusaka, Zambia

10.  he permanently returned to South Africa following the unbanning of the ANC in 1990, and took over from Joe Slovo as head of the South African Communist Party in 1991

11.  Chris Hani was assassinated on 10 April 1993 outside his home in Dawn Park, a racially mixed suburb of Boksburg

12.  Chris Hani was accosted by a Polish far-right immigrant named Janusz Waluś, who shot him in the head and at the back as he stepped out of his car. Clive Derby-Lewis, a senior South African Conservative Party M.P. and Shadow Minister for Economic Affairs at the time, who had lent Waluś his pistol, was also arrested for complicity in Hani’s murder

13.  In 1997, Baragwanath Hospital, one of the largest hospitals in the world, was renamed the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Chris Hani memory

14.  In September 2004, Chris Hani was voted 20th in the controversial Top 100 Greatest South Africans poll

15.  A short opera Hani by composer Bongani Ndodana-Breen with libretto by film producer Mfundi Vundla has been commissioned by Cape Town Opera and University of Cape Town premiering at the Baxter Theatre 21 November 2010

16.  A township on the outskirts of Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu Natal, is named “Haniville” in Chris Hani’s honour

17.  The University of the Western Cape also named a residence after Chris Hani.

18.  One of the District Municipalities in the Eastern Cape was named the Chris Hani District Municipality. This district includes Queenstown, Cofimvaba and Lady Frere.

19.  An all-male residence at Rhodes University in Grahamstown (Eastern Cape, South Africa) is named after Hani. The residence was opened in 2008 and accommodates 73 students.

20.  In 1994, French philosopher Jacques Derrida dedicated the critically acclaimed Specters of Marx to Hani