Colour version not availble. Willie Bester: Tribute to Chris Hani (1993) This piece is the first in a three-part series. The central image in this work is an animated portrait of Chris Hani, the Secretary-General of the South African Communist Party, who was assassinated on Easter Saturday, 1993. Bester used photographs from newspapers to depict the circumstances of his death - on the left his murderer is shown, the Polish immigrant Janus Walusz, and on the right comrades grieving over his stricken body. Other media images in the top right hand corner show the six day mourning period that was declared in Hani's honour, and the outbreak of violence and anger that Hani's death unleashed. Bester has included his own feelings regarding Hani's death by the burnt state of the wood of the central panel. However, the focus of the work is on commemorating Hani's achievements in the battle for peace in South Africa. The bicycle tire around the portrait of Hani represents a laurel wreath. Bester has successfully managed to bring the original meaning of the tire that has become debased through political abuse. By using the tire, Bester knew the form might very well evoke images of the fearful "necklacing" practice (see "necklacing"). However, he was determined to restore it to its original connotations of transport, labour, progress and union activity. The tire is inscribed with the valediction "Hamba Kahle" (Go Gently), and the fateful words that Hani uttered in a television broadcast a few days before he was killed: "I've lived with death for most of my life. Nobody wants to die. I want to live in a free South Africa and I'm prepared to lay down my life for it." Because the wheel can have industrial connotations, it could also suggest Hani's socialist beliefs, which are further indicated by the red colour of the sky behind his portrait and in the hammer-and-sickle emblems. Hani's desire to abandon the armed struggle and to fight the system through the organisation of labour is shown by the AK-47 overlaid by the dove, and by the industrial forms among military apparatus on the right side of the painting. In the bottom right-hand corner there is a figure of a miner, who symbolises this struggle. His torchlight in his helmet illuminates a bank note that represents gains in wage negotiations. The crosses in his goggles refer to the appalling accident record of South African mines. The guitar in the bottom centre of the work stands for a number of things: it shows social harmony and the regimentation of life under Apartheid. The yoke symbolises the continued state of subjugation experienced by the majority of South Africans. In this work Bester is both celebrating Hani's achievements and criticising the violence in South African society. The target on the left of the central image shows how this leader was created into an enemy of the state by government propaganda. The balaclava-clad killer and the "Top Secret Hit List" on the right represent the culmination of the campaign of vilification. The numbers scattered across the target indicates the process of dehumanising a person in this way. Individual human beings, with all their complex experience and history, are reduced by the system to statistics for exploitation and disposal. The central image of Chris Hani shows that he resisted this process through the powers of conviction and courage. This portrait shows Hani at the head of a march - one that was actually protesting his death - and appearing to represent the demands of the people to the viewer.