Justice Minister Michael Masutha will announce on Thursday whether Clive Derby-Lewis and apartheid killers Ferdi Barnard and Eugene De Kock get parole.

Derby-Lewis is currently serving a life sentence for his role in the assassination of SA Communist Party leader Chris Hani, in April 1993, and has repeatedly been denied parole.

Earlier this week there were reports that the medical parole board had recommended that Derby-Lewis, who suffers from lung cancer, be released from custody.

Barnard, who is a former apartheid-era Civil Co-Operation Bureau (CCB) agent was found guilty 17 years ago of the murder of anti-apartheid activist David Webster.

Webster, an anthropologist at the University of the Witwatersrand, was gunned down in 1989 outside his home in Troyeville, Johannesburg.

Almost a decade later, Barnard was convicted of the killing. He was also found guilty of the attempted murder of another activist, Dullah Omar, who went on to serve in both former presidents Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki's cabinets.

Barnard was given two life terms plus a further 63 years in jail, and is currently serving time in Pretoria's Kgosi Mampuru II Prison.

De Kock, former Vlakplaas commander and one of the apartheid regime's most notorious killers, has spent over two decades behind bars, following his arrest in 1994 and his conviction two years later in the Pretoria High Court.

The announcement of whether he be released on parole will come the day after De Kock, who is serving two life sentences for six murders, plus 212 years for other crimes, turns 66.