A HERO’S WELCOME FOR AN APARTHEID KILLER BY FOOTBALL HOOLIGANS
10 April 2025
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 by football hooligans. 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.
The report by the ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association documents recent expressions of support for Walusin in the football context. Hooligans have demonstrated their admiration on banners during football games, on city walls, and on social media.
The appreciation for Walus was demonstrated in January during the football fans’ annual pilgrimage to Czestochowa (Jasna Gora), the most important Catholic monastery in Poland. The organiser of this event, Father Jaroslaw Wasowicz, has been known for preaching extreme nationalist views. For years, he has supported Walus in his public appearances, for example in 2017, during a Polish community event in Slough, UK where he posed for a photo with a banner glorifying the murderer. Wasowicz is a member of the Support Committee for the Candidate for President of the Republic of Poland, Karol Nawrocki.
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’.
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 says: - ‘The cult of Walus was largely built in the stadium stands. It is tolerated by both football authorities and clubs’.
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 anti-racist organization founded in Warsaw in 1996. It has campaigned against antisemitism, racism and xenophobia, and for peace, intercultural dialogue and human rights both in Poland and internationally. ‘NEVER AGAIN’ has conducted the first anti-racism campaign in Eastern European football, ‘Let’s Kick Racism Out of the Stadiums’ and is a founding member of the FARE network.
The campaign ‘Let’s Kick Racism out of Stadiums’ was a brainchild of the late Marcin Kornak (1968-2014), who chaired ‘NEVER AGAIN’ for many years. ‘Let’s Kick Racism out of Stadiums’ has run since the mid-1990s with the aim to combat racism and discrimination at stadiums. One of its main components is monitoring and reporting of hate crimes and hate speech cases.
Report ‘«Our Hero». A Hero’s Welcome For An Apartheid Killer by Football Hooligans’ (full version in PDF file).
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:
Additional information:
www.neveragainassociation.org
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www.twitter.com/StowNIGDYWIECEJ
www.linkedin.com/company/never-again-association
https://neveragainnw.bsky.social