Poster of Chris Hani, 9 days after his assassination (1993)
This poster captures one of the most volatile, knife-edge moments in South Africa’s modern history.
The Date: Monday, 19 April 1993
While Chris Hani was assassinated on Easter Saturday, 10 April 1993, the date printed on this poster—Monday, 19 April 1993—marks his official funeral. Held at the First National Bank Stadium in Johannesburg, it was a day of unprecedented national tension. Over 120,000 people packed the stadium, and millions more stayed home as a massive stay-away action crippled the economy for the day. This poster was printed specifically to be distributed or carried during that historic day of mourning.
The East Rand Provenance
This poster was "picked up in the East Rand." This detail is highly significant because the East Rand (the manufacturing and mining towns east of Johannesburg, now part of Ekurhuleni) was the absolute epicenter of political violence during the transition era. In the early 1990s, the townships of the East Rand—such as Katlehong, Vosloorus, and Thokoza—were locked in a brutal, low-intensity civil war between rival political factions and state-backed third-force operatives. To pick up political ephemera on the East Rand in April 1993 was to step directly into a powder keg.
The Turning Point of the Transition
When Janusz Waluś shot Chris Hani in the driveway of his Dawn Park home (also in the East Rand, near Boksburg), the assassination was intended by its conspirators, including Clive Derby-Lewis, to spark a racial civil war that would derail the democratic negotiations.
Instead, it had the opposite effect. It forced the hand of the apartheid government. With the country on the brink of an uprising, Nelson Mandela addressed the nation on television, successfully calling for calm while effectively demonstrating that the ANC was already holding the real leadership of the country. This crisis broke the deadlock in negotiations, directly leading to the definitive scheduling of South Africa's first democratic elections for April 1994.
300mm x 420mm
Used; torn; creased and marked.
R1,250
