Leader's murder 'a declaration of war', say white supremacists
Followers of murdered South African Eugene Terreblanche have cast the white supremacist leader’s death as a rallying point for their cause, with one claiming his brutal death was “a declaration of war” by blacks against whites.
Terreblanche’s supporters blamed his killing on Saturday on a ruling party official’s performances of an apartheid-era song that advocates killing white farmers.
However, police said it appeared to be a wages dispute that led two of Terreblanche’s farm workers to beat him to death in his bed.
South African officials are trying to ward off any rise in racial tensions 10 weeks before their country of about 50 million enters the global spotlight as host of the World Cup.
President Jacob Zuma appealed for calm following “this terrible deed” and asked South Africans “not to allow agent provocateurs to take advantage of this situation by inciting or fuelling racial hatred”.
Police minister Nathi Mthetwa said Terreblanche, 69, was attacked by a 28-year-old man and a 15-year-old boy, both black. He said they were arrested and would appear in court tomorrow on murder charges.
Terreblanche co-founded and led the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging movement, better known as the AWB, which seeks an all-white republic within mostly-black South Africa.
Its red, white and black insignia resembles a Nazi swastika, but with three prongs instead of four.
He emerged in the 1970s to the right of South Africa’s apartheid government and had threatened to take the country by force if white rule ended. He was known to arrive at meetings on horseback flanked by masked bodyguards dressed in khaki or black.
After serving six years in prison for attacking two black workers, he re-emerged in 2004 with renewed vigour for his cause, but lived in relative obscurity in recent years on his farm outside Ventersdorp, about 68 miles north west of Johannesburg.
Andre Visagie, a top AWB member, said Terreblanche’s face had been bludgeoned beyond recognition. He said his group would avenge the death, but gave no details.
“The death of Mr Terreblanche is a declaration of war by the black community of South Africa to the white community that has been killed for 10 years on end,” Mr Visagie said.
He also said the group would urge football teams to avoid the World Cup out of safety concerns.
Mr Visagie would not say how many people belong to the AWB, but at the height of its influence in the early 1990s, it was believed to have no more than 70,000 members.
He echoed other members of the group in blaming African National Congress Youth Leader Julius Malema, saying he spread hate speech that led to Terreblanche’s killing.
Mr Malema incited controversy last month when he led college students in a song that includes the lyrics “shoot the Boer”. Boer means white farmers in Afrikaans, the language of descendants of early Dutch settlers, or Afrikaners, and is often a derogatory term.
The song sparked a legal battle in which the ruling ANC party challenged a high court that ruled the lyrics as unconstitutional.
The ANC insists the song is a valuable part of its cultural heritage and that the lyrics – which also refer to the farmers as thieves and rapists – are not intended literally and are therefore not hate speech.
Mr Visagie cited the controversy as he dismissed the condolences Mr Zuma offered to Terreblanche’s family.
“My message to Jacob Zuma is: ’Why, Mr President, do you offer your condolences to us if you could have repudiated Mr Malema and prevented the death of Mr Terreblanche?’,” he said.
But the ANC defended itself against the claims of Terreblanche’s supporters yesterday.
“The black community has never declared war on any other nationality in South Africa,” ANC spokesman Jackson Mthembu said. “It is in fact incorrect and these are sentiments that fuel polarisation of the South African populace.”
Mr Malema also denied responsibility during an official visit to neighbouring Zimbabwe.
“ANC will respond to that issue,” he said. “On a personal capacity, I’m not going to respond to what people are saying. I’m in Zimbabwe now, I’m not linked to this.”
An unknown number of white farmers have been killed since the end of apartheid in 1994, many of them in land disputes.
Some critics blame the government’s badly-organised land reform programme and say corruption is a problem. White farmers have also been accused of killing black farm workers.
Terreblanche’s killing comes amid growing disenchantment among blacks for whom the right to vote has not translated into jobs, better housing or education.
