A man jailed for assassinating South Africa's anti-apartheid communist leader Chris Hani has survived a second attack in prison in a month, after a fellow inmate stabbed him with a shard of glass, an official said today.
Clive Derby-Lewis sustained "minor" injuries on his back after another inmate attacked him yesterday with a piece of glass, said Manelisi Wolela, spokesman for the correctional services.
Derby-Lewis was treated at a prison clinic, Wolela said. Prisons authorities have launched an investigation into the assault.
Derby-Lewis and Janus Walusz, who was also jailed for Hani's murder, were on February 26 attacked with a spoon by a fellow prisoner. They suffered lacerations on their heads and hands.
Right-wing former lawmaker Derby-Lewis, 78, and Polish immigrant Walusz, 61, are serving 25 years for shooting dead South African Communist Party leader Hani in front of his home in 1993.
The death of the charismatic and hugely popular leader came at a crucial point in political negotiations to end white minority apartheid rule, and many feared it would spark a civil war.
The assassination pushed racial tensions to near-breaking point, prompting riots and deaths that prompted the late liberation hero Nelson Mandela to call for peace in a nationally televised address.
Mandela became South Africa's first black president following the first all-race elections a year later.
Derby-Lewis and Walusz have remained controversial figures, and their parole applications have drawn fierce opposition from both the public and Hani's family.
