Chris Hani’s daughter on her struggle

Chris Hani’s daughter Lindiwe opens up about losing her father, her struggle with addiction and finding hope again

THE picture was published on the front pages of newspapers around the world: Chris Hani face down in the driveway of his Boksburg home, blood from his head wounds seeping onto the bricks. The man many believed would help lead South Africa into a free future was dead – and the SA Communist Party (SACP) leader’s murder took the country to the brink of civil war.

Yet as the fall-out raged a family was falling apart. The extent of the devastation wrought on Hani’s wife and three daughters is now being bared in black and white by his youngest child, Lindiwe. In her newly released memoir, Being Chris Hani’s Daughter, she reveals the demons that hounded her since the shooting. Then just 12 years old, Lindiwe battled to come to terms with his violent death and the emotional effect it had on her, her sisters and their mom.

The seed for the book was planted when journalist Melinda Ferguson, who co-authored the book, interviewed Lindiwe for a magazine article in 2013. But she was still a “closet drug addict” at the time and not ready to expose her life yet.

“I knew there was no way in hell I could do it then,” Lindi tells us over a latté at a coffee shop in Milpark, Johannesburg. “I thought if I write it now and leave out that part, there are people who will say, ‘Girl, we saw you fall down in Melville [ Johannesburg]. Why’s that not in the book?’ ”

But two and a half years later, after clawing her way out of her addiction to booze and drugs, she eventually put pen to paper – and the result is a brutally honest account of her downward spiral. Lindiwe Hani says her dad Chris Hani (pictured with her as a child, LEFT) is the greatest man she’s ever known. She was devastated by his murder.

Now a 37-year-old mother of one, she talks about all the major losses in her life: her father’s death, the abortion she had at 18, and burying her boyfriend and her sister.

She’s also candid about meeting her dad’s killers, as well as her battle with addiction.

“I wanted it to be clear that I know I was an irresponsible mother,” she says. “But I hope people aren’t interested so much in the seediness as in how I managed to come out of it.”

WHEN her father was gunned down that fateful day in 1993 outside their home in Dawn Park, Boksburg, it felt more like a betrayal to 12-year-old Lindi.

“South Africa was always the promised land,” she says. “We were told, ‘Wait until you get home to SA.’ But less than two years after we got back [ from exile] he was dead. Obviously it wasn’t his fault, but I just felt, ‘You big fat liar’.”

Her mom, Limpho, had to work to support her three daughters – Khwezi, Neo and Lindi – and became an ANC MP in 1994. “In the space of a few months, I lost two parents. That was difficult.”

Once a bubbly child, she lost all confidence and her grades dropped. Limpho decided to send her to boarding school in Cape Town. It was meant to be a fresh start but it was around this time that Lindi first lost herself in alcohol and smoked her first dagga joint.

“I really loved weed. Eating while high,