1993 South African Communist Party leader Chris Hani was shot dead in the front yard of his home. Police arrested a white man in connection with the killing. Political and church leaders appealed to supporters of the popular black leader for calm, but police reported violent demonstrations in two Cape Town townships shortly after the murder. Deputy Law and Order Minister Gert Myburgh said the man arrested for the killing appeared to have been acting alone. They identified him as Januzu Jacub Wallus, 40, from Pretoria.
“The aim of the murder was obviously to derail the peace process and negotiations,” South African Communist Party chairman Joe Slovo said. ANC president Nelson Mandela issued a statement calling the assassination a “heinous crime against the people of our country” as a whole. “Those responsible are demented enemies of justice, democracy and peace,” he said. Hani, 50, was one of the four most powerful figures in the ANC, which resumed talks on a nonracial constitution with the government and other groups at the beginning of the month.
Other important events
1864 - Archduke Maximilian of Austria accepts title of Emperor of Mexico.
1912 - The Titanic sets sail on its ill-fated maiden voyage.
1919 - Revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata is killed in an army ambush in Chinameca, Mexico.
1932 - Paul von Hindenburg is re-elected German president over Adolf Hitler.
1941 - Nazi puppet state formed in Croatia.
1944 - The Soviet Red Army recaptures the Ukrainian port city of Odessa.
1945 - US troops liberate Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald, Germany.
1959 - Japan’s Crown Prince Akihito marries a commoner, Michiko Shoda.
1963 - The nuclear-powered submarine USS Thresher fails to surface off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in a disaster that claims 129 lives.
1972 - United States and Soviet Union sign treaty banning biological warfare.
1981 - Imprisoned Irish Republican Army hunger striker Bobby Sands wins election to the British Parliament.
1983 - Essam Sartawi, a key Palestinian Liberation Organisation peacemaker, is assassinated in Portugal.
1988 - An army ammunition dump blew up near Rawalpindi, Pakistan, killing more than 100 people.
1990 - A Frenchwoman and a Belgian man are freed after 2 1/2 years in captivity in Lebanon.
1992 - John Major wins election and becomes British prime minister.
1995 - Former Indian Prime Minister Morarji Desai dies at the age of 81.
1997 - The newly-renovated 175-year-old Sharjah Old Fort is opened.
1998 - British and Irish governments join with the Ulster parties to seal historic pact.
2001 - South Africa becomes the first country in the world to approve a solution that can be used in place of blood in transfusions.
2008 - Nepal holds its first election in nine years.
2009 - Abdul Aziz Bouteflika wins a third term as President of Algeria.
2010 -Polish President Lech Kaczynski and some of the country’s highest military and civilian leaders are killed in the plane crash in western Russia. 2013 - British scientist and test-tube baby pioneer Robert Edwards dies at the age of 87.
2015-31 schoolchildren are killed in a head-on collision between a truck and a bus that caught fire in Morocco.
2016-Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk resigns, paving the way for new government.2017 - The first-ever freight ‘Silk Road’ train leaves from Britain to China.
