The High Court in Pretoria will hear an urgent appeal for medical parole on behalf of Clive Derby-Lewis on Tuesday, Front National said.

“The legal representatives will argue that administrative incompetence on the part of the department of correctional services is the root cause of the rapid decline in the health condition of Derby-Lewis…,” spokesman Francois Cloete said.

Derby-Lewis was convicted of conspiring to kill SA Communist Party general secretary Chris Hani by providing the gun Polish immigrant Janusz Walus used to kill him in the driveway of his home in Boksburg, on the East Rand, on April 10, 1993.

The 78-year-old has been diagnosed with lung cancer and has made various bids for parole since June 2010.

“Derby-Lewis is currently the world’s oldest political prisoner and had already served 22 years of a life sentence…,” Cloete said.

In October Derby-Lewis’s lawyer Marius Coertze said he remained “hopeful” the application could be granted.

“If it does not succeed this time, I don’t see how it will ever succeed,” he said at the time.

In June, another lawyer for Derby-Lewis, Elsabe Juin, said the correctional services department had promised to give urgent attention to his application for his medical parole, but would not commit to a date.

On June 19, correctional services said it received an incomplete application for medical parole for Derby-Lewis and was waiting for a completed form. SAPA