So the SACP has finally come to its senses and has stopped flattering the murderers Clive Derby-Lewis and Janus Walus into thinking that the party's contempt for President Thabo Mbeki presented them with a window of opportunity for freedom.

So the SACP has finally come to its senses and has stopped flattering the murderers Clive Derby-Lewis and Janus Walus into thinking that the party's contempt for President Thabo Mbeki presented them with a window of opportunity for freedom.

It is a good thing that the party has by implication also withdrawn its fanciful accusation that Mbeki had a hand in Hani's murder.

This conspiratorial nonsense has allowed the two murderers to try to dupe the public into thinking Hani was murdered with the tacit approval or connivance of Mbeki and other non-communists from within the ruling tripartite alliance.

The conspiracy theorists claim Hani had to die to prevent communist domination of the post-apartheid dispensation that would have culminated in a workers' paradise.

We agree with the SACP that the two cocky murderers should come clean if indeed they have withheld vital information regarding their conspiracy to kill Hani. Their cowardly deed threatened the peace process and almost plunged this country into an orgy of unprecedented interracial violence.

But unlike the SACP we see no need for a judicial inquiry into Hani's death in the absence of compelling new evidence.

And we doubt that Walusz and Derby-Lewis are sincere.