Terreblanche 'killer' is Zimbabwean
by Sapa
20/05/2010 00:00:00
ONE of Eugene Terreblanche's alled killers is a Zimbabwean, a South African court heard on Wednesday. Chris Mahlangu, 27, was born in Chiredzi, Masvingo Province, under a different name, his uncle testified at his bail hearing before a Ventersdorp magistrate.
Mahlangu is charged with murder and robbery with aggravating circumstances over the April 3 slaying of the white supremacist. His co-accused is a 15-year-old boy.
Isiah Ngobeni, Mahlangu’s uncle, was asked why they had different surnames. He told the court: “To survive, their father changed their surname when they arrived in South Africa." He said Mahlangu’s original surname was Rhangani, and that his parents were still in Zimbabwe.
“I don't know why he used Mahlangu. Maybe it is the surname his father used when he was here,” Ngobeni said.
He said he first saw Mahlangu in Chiredzi, when he was about six-years-old, at the crèche he went to in 1989.
He said after he moved to South Africa, he saw him in 1997 in Mabopane. He lived with Mahlangu for three-and-half years. Mahlangu moved out when he got married.
Ngobeni said Mahlangu moved to Itsoseng with his wife but returned after their house burnt down.
Speaking through an interpreter, Ngobeni gave details of Mahlangu’s extended family to the court as it tried to decide whether he would be a flight risk if granted bail.
Ngobeni said he had not believed the police when they told him Mahlangu was accused of killing Terreblanche, until Mahlangu told him so himself.
“He called me and I recognised his voice. We talked and even argued on the phone,” Ngobeni said.
He said if granted bail, he would take him in if he needed a place to stay. He also said Mahlangu had applied for a South African ID several times without success.
“He has very strong ties to South Africa. He has more than 20 relatives here,” Ngobeni said.
Meanwhile, the court dismissed an application to amend a charge against Mahlangu .
Mahlangu’s lawyer, Puna Moroko, argued that the alleged offence was unplanned and therefore a schedule five matter, rather than planned and premeditated, which would make it a schedule six crime.
“Our version is that the accused acted in self-defence and the two cannot be married – self-defence and premeditated murder. A ruling on this point is crucial. Any other route, in my view, would not be the correct one,” Moroko said.
At the last hearing, the court heard that Terreblanche was hit and stabbed 28 times.
Earlier, Moroko said investigating officer Tsietsi Mano would “turn brown” when cross-questioned on his testimony that Terreblanche was asleep when he was attacked with a panga and an iron rod, and “did not see it coming”.
Magistrate Magaola Foso dismissed Moroko’s application for the charge, ruling that it could be addressed during argument.
Foso postponed the bail hearing to June 10.
Mahlangu sat quietly in the dock, wearing the same Nike tracksuit that he had worn at previous appearances. – Sapa
Labels: CHRIS MAHLANGU, EUGENE TERREBLANCHE
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Court does overtime in Terre'Blanche case
MIRANDA ANDREW | VENTERSDORP, SOUTH AFRICA - May 19 2010 17:10
The Ventersdorp Magistrate's Court worked overtime on Wednesday as it tried to complete the bail application of Chris Mahlangu, one of the people accused of murdering former Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) leader Eugene Terre'Blanche.
Speaking through a xiTsonga interpreter, Mahlangu's uncle, Isaiah Ngobeni, detailed the accused's extended family to the court. Magistrate Magaola Foso needed to decide whether Mahlangu would be a flight risk if granted bail and determine why he did not have an identity document.
The first time he met Mahlangu was when his brother took him to a creche in Chiredzi, Zimbabwe, in 1989 when Mahlangu was about "five or six".
He said when police told him about Terre'Blanche's murder, they never said Mahlangu had committed the offence, but that he was a suspect. He did not believe it because he did not know Mahlangu was working in the Ventersdorp area.
"He is a humble person, he respects me, he never had a grudge or quarrel with me. He was not a person to be aggrieved," said Ngobeni.
"He is not a violent person and always, he was obedient. When I talked to him he always said, 'Uncle forgive me if I offend you'."
Foso asked whether Mahlangu's family would send him back to South Africa if he went to Zimbabwe, knowing he was in trouble.
"His mom and dad won't push him into the fire," Ngobeni said.
Foso said he asked this because if Mahlangu went back to Zimbabwe, Ngobeni would be the only link with him to get him back.
"Do you see the picture?" said Foso, pointing out that for a year Ngobeni had not known Mahlangu's whereabouts.
Mahlangu and a 15-year-old boy are accused of murdering Terre'Blanche on his farm on April 3.
Amendment bid dismissed
Earlier, the court dismissed an application to amend a charge against Mahlangu.
Mahlangu's lawyer, Puna Moroko, argued that the alleged offence was unplanned and therefore a schedule five matter, rather than planned and premeditated, which would make it a schedule six crime.
"Our version is that the accused acted in self-defence and the two cannot be married -- self defence and premeditated murder.
"A ruling on this point is very crucial. Any other route, in my view, will not be the correct one," he said.
At the last hearing, the court heard that Terre'Blanche was hit and stabbed 28 times.
His body was unrecognisable to investigators, who arrived on the scene after Mahlangu and his co-accused handed themselves to police.
Foso dismissed Moroko's application for the charge to be amended, ruling that it could be addressed during argument. -- Sapa
Labels: CHRIS MAHLANGU, EUGENE TERREBLANCHE, YOUTHS
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ET murder trial a baptism of fire for new Child Act
GLYNNIS UNDERHILL | CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA - Apr 23 2010 13:18
When people accused attorney Zola Majavu of being politically motivated in offering his services free to the 15-year-old boy arrested for the murder of Eugene Terre'Blanche, Thuso Motaung knew they had got it wrong.
Motaung was a popular Lesedi FM presenter when he was arrested for defrauding the SABC of R32-million in 2008. "All my assets had been frozen and Zola came to my rescue to represent me, never worrying whether I had money to pay him," said Motaung, who was eventually acquitted of the charges.
"Zola is a deeply religious man and we often prayed together. He will be a godsend to the child."
On Easter Sunday Majavu received calls from concerned members of civic organisations, asking him to represent the teenager and his co-accused, 27-year-old Chris Mahlangu. They had been arrested in connection with the brutal slaying of Terre'Blanche, the leader of the far-right Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB).
Fears for the safety of the accused grew as political tension ran high after Terre'Blanche's mutilated body was found in the bedroom of his run-down farm outside Ventersdorp.
"There was absolutely no political motivation involved in my taking on this case," said Majavu. "I am well known in football circles as the prosecutor of the Premier Soccer League and people do contact me for help. I worked at the Legal Aid Centre at Wits University for eight years and lawyers are encouraged to do pro bono work."
When Majavu arrived in Ventersdorp two days later, he made his way past the uniformed AWB supporters outside the court to find that Mahlangu had already appointed a lawyer and three Legal Aid lawyers were on hand to help the minor, who, by law, cannot be named.
Majavu turned to leave but was called back by a social worker, who said the teenager wanted him to represent him. The slight, neatly dressed child and his family were waiting for him in a private room in the court building.
Although Majavu speaks four African languages, he found it difficult to communicate with him.
CONTINUES BELOW
"He hadn't eaten for some time and he didn't open up to people easily, not even me. But then I didn't know this child from a bar of soap," Majavu said. "The social workers advised me not to bombard him or else he would shut down and I took their advice."
Majavu learned the child had dropped out of school and quietly slipped through the cracks in the social welfare system. When he was arrested, he was living in the horse stable on Terre'Blanche's farm. Although most children in the nearby Tshing township where he was raised were afraid of AWB members, the boy had been working for the AWB leader.
Terre'Blanche had been trying to revive the AWB but had reportedly run out of money after he was sentenced to six years in prison in 2001 for assaulting a petrol station worker and the attempted murder of a security guard.
The teenager and Mahlangu have been charged with the murder of Terre'Blanche, housebreaking and robbery with aggravating circumstances, crimen injuria and attempted robbery with aggravating circumstances.
The charge of crimen injuria relates to the accused allegedly pulling Terre'Blanche's pants to his knees and exposing his private parts.
Allegations that Terre'Blanche had been sexually involved with the accused were unfortunate, said Majavu. "I specifically conversed with my client on the issue of whether there had been any sexual activity and he denied it," said Majavu. "Nothing like that emanated from him."
While Majavu will not disclose the nature of his defence before the trial, he said his client would plead not guilty in court.
As the first test case for the new Child Justice Act, implemented on April 1, Majavu's moves are being keenly followed by members of the legal fraternity. The attorney said the boy had been fortunate that, in line with the newly implemented Act, he was immediately taken to a place of safety. In the past he could have been held in a police cell or in prison, where he would have come into contact with adult offenders.
Majavu said he had prepared a bail application for his client but had waited for a probation officer's report before making a final decision. Before the Act was implemented, in a case involving minor, a social worker was not guaranteed to act as a probation officer. This is obligatory under the new Act.
"I told my client what his probation officer had recommended, which is that he should remain at the place of safety. He had thought that if he got bail he would still be able to go back to the place of safety, but I had to explain to him this would not happen," said Majavu. "He changed his mind and asked me not to apply for bail."
In keeping with the new Act, at a pre-trial preliminary inquiry convened last week, the teenager had to explain to magistrate Makgaola Foso why he would not be applying for bail. He told Foso he would be "better off" at the place of safety, where he was getting three meals a day and was enrolled in an education programme.
His mother and an uncle, the probation officer and his defence team were present at the inquiry.
"My client is getting professional help and he's got a decent bed, food, kids to play with and a television to watch," said Majavu. "I know he's following the news about the case, but there's nothing I can do about that."
The teenager appears to have a comfortable relationship with his family, who Majavu described as "very poor". Police confirmed that the boy had been caught breaking into a biscuit factory and had been serving a sentence under correctional supervision at the time of his arrest.
A 15-year-old is considered old enough to have the capacity to stand trial for murder and in this case the probation officer pronounced the teenager fit to stand trial. His socioeconomic situation was investigated by the probation officer, who becomes the eyes and ears of the court.
Majavu said the boy was experiencing the benefits of the new Act and, with the high-profile nature of his case, there were other benefits.
"Child psychologists are phoning in offering free counselling," he said. "Other people want to send them food parcels."
Labels: COURTS, EUGENE TERREBLANCHE, LAWYERS, ZOLA MAJAVU
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Why colour still defines everything in South Africa
By Karen Allen BBC News, South Africa
Sun 11 Apr. 2010, 22:30 CAT
Around 3,000 people commemorated Eugene Terreblanche's life
The road to Ventersdorp, home of the late Eugene Terreblanche, is fringed with fertile fields. It is a breath of fresh air driving through the countryside. But then you see the road signs, they are daubed with racist graffiti.
You think it is a throwback to the 1980s, but then you realise the spray paint is still fresh and these racist slogans come from the mouths of a post-apartheid generation. You can almost taste the racism in Ventersdorp.
I was trying to get a sense of how people were reacting to the killing of the town's most infamous resident and whether the extreme right-wing views he represented had become less evident since the fall of apartheid.
Looking for vengeance
I intercept a white woman as she emerges from a chip shop. With her neatly coiffed hair and freshly-applied lipstick, she is a picture of what might appear to be "rural decency".
And she is happy to talk. "Did she expect a backlash following Terreblanche's death?" I enquire politely.
"Yes," she says. And, taking me by surprise, she describes rather forcefully how she would happily take up arms herself to avenge the killing.
This lady may represent an extreme of Afrikaner thought, but in this town, where the swastika-like emblem of the AWB (Afrikaner Resistance Movement) stands proud, there are many conservatives whose views have hardened these last few days.
This febrile atmosphere has not been calmed by the rantings of the youth league of the ruling African National Congress
One black woman I talked to lamented that Eugene Terreblanche had been made a martyr.
"We may pay the price," she told me.
The khaki-and-black clad members of the AWB were largely dismissed in the mid-90s as an embarrassment and an irrelevance.
I was told in Ventersdorp that since Terreblanche's killing, the AWB claim that new members are queuing up to join, but few here believe they will be a significant political force.
It was teeming with rain when I met Harry at a farm half-an-hour's drive from Ventersdorp.
He had just picked his son up from university where black and white students now study side by side. Harry's parents were killed two years ago in a brutal robbery at their home.
His best friend Paul was gunned down on his farm in Limpopo just a few weeks back.
Farm killings, fuelled by South Africa's gross inequalities, have become big news.
And because the majority of farmers are white, it has assumed a racial dimension.
New dawn fades
This febrile atmosphere has not been calmed by the rantings of the youth league of the ruling African National Congress, who have been taunting the farmers with anti-white songs from the days of the liberation struggle.
Harry is one of those South Africans who was full of hope when Nelson Mandela became president in 1994.
Map
But now, he tells me, he feels let down by President Zuma. He said he had expected him to behave like a father protecting all his children.
"This he has failed to do," he said.
The great irony is that the frustration of white farmers like Harry is shared by many blacks.
Jabu is a black businessman in Soweto, the township in southern Johannesburg which is associated with the liberation struggle.
Fear of crime, I realised later, was the common thread that united these two men.
But one of them thinks the answer is a return to racial segregation. The other says the country needs to come together and move on.
Race 'excuse'
Jabu was sipping sodas at Sakumzi's restaurant in Soweto when I first met him. He is bright, streetwise and was wearing the football strip of one of the local clubs.
Playing on a white assumption, he introduces himself to me as a car thief. I very quickly realise he was joking.
He was the only black player on the student football team when he studied at the University of the Witwatersrand back in the early 1990s.
A supporter of slain white supremacist leader Eugene Terreblanche holds a placard reading, Afrikaners on the march to freedom, outside the court in Ventersdorp, South Africa, Tuesday, April 6, 2010
South Africa was famously dubbed the 'rainbow nation' post-apartheid
Now nearly two decades later, he says the racial mix there has remained virtually the same. But he is certain that things are changing for the better in South Africa and he prides himself on having a racially mixed social circle.
Jabu sympathises with the white farmers who express their fears over crime but insists that everyone in South Africa is affected.
"I grew up in my neighbourhood with thieves," he tells me. "And now, most of them are dead."
There is a man up the road who specialise in "panga" or machete killings, he says bluntly.
"What can we do?" he asks. "We just try to rub along together and remember the spirit of "ubuntu", or brotherhood, that Nelson Mandela showed us. We also need to do more to bridge the economic divide. And we've got to stop using race as an excuse."
This is famously the rainbow nation and much has changed here since the days of apartheid. Yet colour, it seems to me, still defines everything in South Africa.
Labels: EUGENE TERREBLANCHE, KAREN ALLEN, VENTERSDORP
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Terreblanche gay past revealed
by
12/04/2010 00:00:00
SLAIN white supremacist leader Eugene Terreblanche always had homosexual “tendencies”, it has been revealed after South African police confirmed his April 3 murder may be investigated as a homosexual sex crime.
Details of a
1980s sex scandal involving Terreblanche and a male Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) supporter have resurfaced just as
lawyers for his two alleged killers said they would mount a defence that he was killed while trying to molest one of them.
Officers said earlier that a pay dispute with his two employees, both black, led to the killing of Terreblanche, who has been on the political margins since his efforts to preserve apartheid in the early 1990s.
"We're not going to focus on one thing," said investigator Musa Zondi. "We will investigate all pertinent facts that have a bearing on the matter."
Terreblanche was hacked and battered to death on April 3 and found with his trousers pulled down. Police have denied a condom was also found at the scene.
"My instructions from my client are that there was some sodomy going on and it sparked the murder of Mr Terreblanche," Puna Moroko, an attorney for 28-year-old Chris Mahlangu, told the Sunday Times newspaper. The other accused is 15.
Max du Preez who founded the Vrye Weekblad newspaper in the 1980s said claims of Terreblanche’s secret homosexual liaisons had not come as a surprise to him.
"It's not a complete secret that Eugene had some of these tendencies," said Max du Preez,
In the 1980s, his weekly newspaper published the story of an AWB bodyguard who claimed to have woken up after a night of heavy partying to find Terreblanche on top of him, trying to molest him.
The bodyguard laid a complaint within the AWB and was promptly kicked out of the organisation.
The bodyguard went to the Vrye Weekblad -- the only newspaper that would run the story.
"No other newspaper touched it because they reckoned it was defamatory. But we thought it was true," Du Preez told The Star on Sunday.
After the story was published, there was no reaction from Terreblanche or the AWB.
"Eugene didn't say a word," said Du Preez.
Terreblanche's foray into Ventersdorp that fateful Friday -- to buy ciders for his workers, and a bottle of vodka for himself -- appears to be no different from the AWB shindig in the 1980s.
Eyewitnesses say they saw the AWB leader -- reportedly estranged from his wife -- buying liquor at a Ventersdorp liquor store before taking his workers back to the farm where he was later bludgeoned to death.
A worker at Overland Liquor Store said Terreblanche and the two workers were “happy” and everything seemed “okay”.
The worker described one of the workers as being “young” and the other as being “in his 20s”.
The AWB, accused of whipping up racist feeling following the killing, is denying their leader was a homosexual.
Meanwhile, the accused Mahlangu, and a 15-year-old, who is too young to be named, are expected to appear in the Ventersdorp Magistrate's Court on Wednesday for a formal bail application.
They are charged with murder, housebreaking with intent to rob and robbery with aggravating circumstances, attempted robbery and crimen injuria.
Terreblanche was buried in Ventersdorp last Friday.
Labels: EUGENE TERREBLANCHE, HOMOSEXUALITY
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Terre'Blanche sodomised his killers: report
By: ST-TOL-TZG
Posted: Sunday, April 11, 2010 11:03 pm
Evil and racist leader of South Africa's far-right Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB), Eugène Terre’Blanche
REPORTS from South Africa say that the leader of the far-right Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB), Eugène Terre’Blanche was murdered by his farm workers after he tried to sodomise them.
Lieutenant-General Jan Mabula of South African police confirmed that they were taking the allegations seriously. He said: "We are looking at this. We are looking at everything that is being alleged. We have also confiscated the clothing of the two accused."
The Sunday Times newspaper in South Africa carried a report saying that the two black farm workers accused of murdering Mr Terre’Blanche, say they were protecting themselves from homosexual advances.
"My instructions from my client are that there was some sodomy going on and it sparked the murder of Mr Terre'Blanche," one of the workers' lawyers, Puna Moroko, told the newspaper.
He added that Mr Terre'Blanche had tried to have sex "with one or both" of the workers.
Police have denied earlier allegations that a condom was found on the scene. “100% no, no no,” Captain Adéle Myburgh told reporters.
The two suspects, Chris Mahlangu, 27, and a 15-year-old, face a number of charges, including crimen injuria – a crime under South African common law, defined to be the act of "unlawfully, intentionally and seriously impairing the dignity of another" – for pulling down Mr Terre’Blanche’s pants and exposing his private parts after they had crushed his skull with an iron bar and chopped him with a machete.
The Afrikaans-language weekly newspaper Rapport reported claims that Mr Terre’Blanche had mistreated white and black workers on his farm and that a teenage boy, who was a member of the AWB, regularly visited Mr Terre’Blanche, who sexually abused him.
Mr Terre’Blanche’s wife, Martie, was not at the farm the night of the murder, but at their other home in the nearby town of Ventersdorp.
Steyn van Ronge, who succeeded Mr Terre'Blanche as leader of the AWB, has dismissed the allegations as smears. “He (Terre’Blanche) felt sorry for (the boy) because his parents were divorced.”
The AWB issued a strongly worded statement today, denying several allegations that had sprung up after Mr Terre’Blanche’s brutal murder on his remote farm in the north-west of the country.
André Visagie, secretary-general of the AWB, said that Mr Terre’Blanche, 69, had not had the energy to rape someone as he had not taken his heart medication on the day of his death.
Mr Terre'Blanche, 69, was one of more than 3,000 farmers murdered in South Africa in 15 years.
AWB has said it will avenge the death of their racist leader.
Members of the AWB, many clad in khaki uniforms with swastika-like insignia, waved the now banned flag of apartheid South Africa and sang the former national anthem, Die Stem.
Labels: EUGENE TERREBLANCHE, HOMOSEXUALITY
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COMMENT - Usually I leave the salacious stuff to the tabloids, but... damn! This is why no one should be above the law. And why apartheid (or slavery) is such a sick system. It is almost a running joke that the most anti-gay people are themselves gay. However, how much closeted behaviour is going on behind these exponents of racism? We know Strom Thurmond had a bi-racial daughter, and Joseph Goebbels had a Polish mistress. But how much of it is really gay attraction and subsequent repression of that attraction, expressed as racism? (Not that I'm a psychiatrist, but you have to wonder.)
Terreblanche 'killed in gay orgy'
by Staff Reporter
09/04/2010 00:00:00
SOUTH African police investigating the murder of white supremacist leader Eugene Terreblanche have heard claims that he met his death after a booze-fuelled GAY sex orgy with his two black workers, New Zimbabwe.com can reveal.
Investigators have heard how Terreblanche, who was leader of the right wing Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) which campaigned for an independent white homeland, led a secret double life.
The new revelations will come as a blow to Terreblanche’s AWB movement which survived a split in the late 1980’s when he was caught having an affair with an attractive, blonde journalist, Jani Allan – an affair seen as a terrible betrayal within the organisation because he was married, and she was English. As one commentator put it, the affair “exposed Terreblanche’s extremism for what it was – a giant paper tiger.”
South African police have charged two farm workers, aged 15 and 28, with murder, four counts of housebreaking and robbery with aggravated circumstances, attempted robbery and crimen injuria after Terreblanche’s NAKED body was found prone on his bed just after 5PM on April 3, 2010.
Although initial reports suggested Terreblanche was killed following a pay dispute, the farmer’s neighbours in Ventersdorp, a town situated in South Africa’s North West Province, have questioned this version of events.
A local liquor store owner has told detectives Terreblanche frequented his store in the company of the two men now accused of killing him. Their last visit was just HOURS before his murder – and Terreblanche, who drank whiskey, had bought a six-pack of the cider, Savanna.
A police source said: “These workers were fairly new on Terreblanche’s property, and we have heard claims that he may have been killed in a turf war between his former partners and the two workers now arrested.
“That doesn’t appear likely, but what we have not discounted is that this was a sex orgy gone wrong.”
Detectives have also interviewed several of Terreblanche’s former employees, including one youthful member of the AWB pulled out by his family over rumours of an affair, to test the various theories surrounding his death.
Defence lawyers, meanwhile, are said to be preparing a case centred around the bombshell revelations.
Terreblanche’s supporters have sought to use his death to project what they say is a bigger crisis –the alleged targeting of white farmers by poor blacks either for criminal reasons, or in Terreblanche’s case, alleged racism which they blame on the singing of an anti-apartheid song which has the lyrics “kill the Boer” by the ANC’s Youth League.
But the AWB retracted earlier calls to avenge his murder, it is believed after learning of the true circumstances of his killing.
Terreblanche, jailed for three years for assaulting a black petrol station worker and the attempted murder of a black security guard in 1996, was buried in racially-charged scenes on Friday.
Labels: APARTHEID, EUGENE TERREBLANCHE, HOMOSEXUALITY
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Terre'Blanche death exposes media hypocrisy
By: Comment by Philip Murombedzi
Posted: Saturday, April 10, 2010 7:42 pm
ANYONE who lives in Britain would have been shocked by the way the murder of Eugene Terre'Blanche -- the white supremacist and racist leader of Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) -- was portrayed in that country's media. It was almost unbelievable!
Terre'Blanche was an undefiant, divisive person who never repented. After his release from prison for killing a black person, he quipped: "I was never wrong to honour my heritage and to love my people, and to be there when they called me!"
I hear the world's media descended in droves on Ventersdorp ahead of Terre'Blanche's funeral on Friday, with guest houses in the normally sleepy North West town inundated with bookings.
"We have never experienced anything like this, we have had bookings from journalists in France, Spain, Germany," said the owner of the Ruimte Guest House on the edge of Ventersdorp.
"I am sending all my bookings to the other guest houses in town. It's all journalists and they may have a problem because many of them can't speak Afrikaans. They'll need translators to help them get around Ventersdorp."
Terre'Blanche, the evil, racist, far Right Boer was beaten and hacked to death on his farm outside Ventersdorp on Saturday after a wage dispute, apparently.
Article continues below
The status he was accorded was unbelievable and made a lot of people cringe. Sky News and BBC even substituted the return of golfer Tiger Woods and the election campaigns of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg to televise the death of a man who advocated division in South Africa and the perpetuation of Apartheid.
What was more interesting was that there was another story running concurrently with the burial of that racist Boer: the story of ANC Youth League president Julius Malema kicking out a British journalist, Jonah Fisher, out of the ANC headquarters for constant interruption as he gave his brief on a recent trip to Zimbabwe. The BBC almost crucified Malema for that incident, and remained quiet about Fisher's uncouth and unbefitting conduct.
Interestingly, the BBC reported that: "Terreblanche's killing has unearthed racial tensions in the small town - tensions which are a rarely spoken fact of life in many South African rural farming communities."
Where was the BBC over the last 10 or so years? It wasn't Terre'Blanche's killing, but his life, that encouraged "racial tensions" in South Africa.
One commentator wrote: "The tone of BBC journalists in Africa has always been to undermine and patronize ... If you follow the reports of Eugene Terre'Blance on the BBC website, there is almost a sadness, a sense of regret from his death by the BBC. Suddenly the brute is sanitized and spoken of in almost reverent terms."
British newspapers also warned of "an impending race war ahead of the 2010 Soccer World Cup", because of Terre'Blanche's murder. Unbelievable! Do they think this man was so loved that his killing would almost spark a national crisis? What exactly do they think about South Africa that we do not know? We thought Zimbabwe was the worst country in their eyes.
The British Daily Star newspaper, under the headline "World Cup machete threat", warned of "machete gangs roaming the streets" of South Africa after Terre'Blanche's murder. The newspaper warned that a "civil war" could erupt and threaten South Africa's hosting of the World Cup.
Unfortunately calm returned to Ventersdorp despite the BBC and other media's scaremongering.
The racism of the media in Britain has gone unchallenged, unquestioned leaving many minorities without any faith in the media or any voice with which to counter the racial stereotypes it perpetuates. One need only glance at the daily British papers to read reports of Yardie drug gangs, fraudulent asylum seekers, foreign prostitute rings, and the perpetually negative portrayal of entire ethnic communities by the media.
The UK Commission for Racial Equality chair Trevor Phillips talked about tackling the snowy peaks of industry. In the media, particularly the mainstream printed press, there are snowy lowlands with almost all-White newsrooms. These newsrooms have fostered a distorted and pernicious public perception of Africans and African countries, especially Zimbabwe.
President Mugabe spent almost all of his political life called names by the BBC media. From day one, he was called a terrorist for fighting imperialism and colonialism.
The history of Africans is a centuries old struggle against oppression and discrimination. The BBC and international media have played a key role in perpetuating the effects of this historical oppression and in contributing to Africans' continuing status as second-class citizens on their own continent.
As a result, many white people have suffered from a deep uncertainty as to who Africans really are. This has raised doubts, amongst many Africans, about the white man's value system. Indeed, it has also aroused the troubling suspicion that whatever the "white media" reports on Africa is untrue.
The social, political and economic factors of racism have become more than just a bias. They are also a profitable industry, in which the West will continue to suppress the developing world in order to maximize profits.
One fact remains: international, especially British media is not as impartial as it claims to be. The world is still a "white, white world".
________________
*Philip Murombedzi is the editor of the Zimbabwe Guardian. He can be reached via philipmurombedzi *** yahoo.com
Labels: BBC, EUGENE TERREBLANCHE, HYPOCRISY, INTERNATIONAL MEDIA
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‘Terre-Blanche must not be buried on African soil’
8 April 2010
The Pan Africanist Youth Congress of Azania (Payco) today objected to the burial of Eugene Terreblanche tomorrow.
"ET does not deserve to be buried on African soil. He must be buried somewhere in his Volkstaat in the Indian Ocean," the movement said in a statement.
"ET has been anti-Africa and Africans throughout his racist life and burying him on African soil would be an insult to African people."
Referring to the suspects arrested for his murder, Payco said:
"We also demand that the trial of courageous men who put an end to ET’s racism must be moved out of Ventersdorp racist town. This case must not be handled by a white judge or prosecutor.
"The demon of white supremacy and racism must be exorcised from our country. We hope that other white racists have learned a lesson through this heroic armed struggle by two African men against the diseased symbol of archaic white supremacy."
Labels: EUGENE TERREBLANCHE, PAN-AFRICANIST CONGRESS
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SA white supremacist storms off TV show
By: Sapa-tzg
Posted: Thursday, April 8, 2010 2:57 pm
AWB Secretary-Seneral Andre Visagie tosses his microphone as political analyst Lebohang Pheko looks on. Photo: Courtesy of e.tv
THE secretary-general of the AWB, Andre Visagie, was escorted from the studio of the eNews programme Africa 360 after
threatening his fellow interviewee, political analyst Lebohang Pheko on Wednesday after
she questioned him about racism against black workers on white-owned South African farms.
Visagie, who a few days ago vowed to avenge the death of Apartheid sympathiser and white supremacist, Eugene Terre'Blanche, was a guest on the prime-time news show.
The argument started when Pheko quizzed Visagie about the abuse of black farm workers in South Africa by their white employers.
Pheko challenged the white supremacist calling his perspective a "very narrow perspective".
"Do you care about the staving millions of black people in this country?" asked Pheko. "Do you care about the millions of farm workers who are being oppressed in this country?"
Visagie told Pheko not to question him about the black workers after he had failed to answer the questions. He ripped off his microphone and threw it to the floor before storming from the set.
He immediately returned and became embroiled in a verbal spat with host Chris Maroleng, who came to Pheko's defence.
When he returned and approached Pheko, pointing a finger at her, Maroleng tried to step between them and push Visagie away.
"Don't you dare touch me in my studio," Maroleng said repeatedly. "You'll be in trouble."
The AWB member replied: "I'll touch you in your studio."
Visagie was escorted from the set, but turned back again. Pointing his finger at Pheko, he said: "I am not finished with you."
Maroleng could be heard asking Visagie: "Mr Visagie, stop threatening this woman now. Why are you threatening this woman? She is just giving her opinion."
Labels: EUGENE TERREBLANCHE, POLITICAL VIOLENCE, RACISM
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Racial clashes at Terre’blanche hearing
Associated Press-HR.
VENTERSDORP (South Africa). Whites and blacks faced off angrily in song yesterday in front of a heavily guarded courthouse before the first hearing of a teenager and another farm worker who have allegedly confessed to killing white supremacist leader, Eugene Terre’blanche, in a wage dispute.
The death of Terre’blanche, a militant Afrikaner leader once convicted of beating a black farm worker so badly the man was left brain damaged, has focused attention on simmering racial tensions less than 10 weeks before South Africa hosts the World Cup.
Police officers rushed to separate nearly 2 000 people split into white and black groups after a middle-aged white woman sprayed an energy drink on blacks singing the Zulu choruses of the country’s national anthem. Whites had earlier been waving apartheid era flags and singing the parts of the national anthem that are in Afrikaans and that date to the apartheid era.
Police set up coils of razor wire to separate the groups — whites who said they were there to support the family of the slain farmer and blacks supporting the family of the 15-year-old suspect and his 28-year-old co-worker.
Authorities say Terre’blanche (69) was bludgeoned to death on Saturday in his bed. The 15-year-old’s mother told AP Television News that the suspects killed the farmer because he hadn’t paid them in months.
Yesterday’s court hearing in the town of Ventersdorp, some 160km west of the capital Pretoria, will not be public because the younger suspect is a minor. Police have not identified either of the suspects by name.
Minutes before the confrontation, far-right militant whites had provocatively waved old flags signifying white rule and launched into a rendition of the apartheid-era anthem in the Afrikaans language.
"We need more people in here — quick!" a police officer yelled, on the run, as the two groups advanced on each other and police scrambled to keep them apart.
After calm was restored, Pieter Steyn, the provincial leader of Terre’blanche’s Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging movement, better known as the AWB, apologised for the woman who sprayed the blacks.
A day earlier, Steyn had retreated from threats made by other militants to avenge Terre’blanche’s death. Steyn said the AWB renounces violence, and that the earlier threats were made "in the heat to the moment. We have spoken to every one and told them to be calm."
Terre’blanche’s AWB has blamed African National Congress Youth League leader Julius Malema for the death, saying his insistence on public performances of an anti-apartheid song that includes lines about killing white farmers was hate speech that led to Terre’blanche’s killing.
Malema says the song has nothing to do with Terre’blanche’s death. The ANC insists the song is part of its heritage and that the lyrics — which also speak of white farmers as thieves and rapists — refer to those who supported apartheid and now oppose democracy.
Bomber Matinyane, regional director of the South African National Civic Organisation, a civil rights group, equated Malema’s song and the display of apartheid-era flags, saying both inflamed racial tensions.
"Malema must stop it and they must stop flying those old flags," Matinyane said outside the courthouse.
Blacks outside the courthouse sang other songs from the struggle for majority rule that finally came in 1994 after years of state-sponsored violence by the white minority regime and urban guerrilla warfare waged by the ANC.
Brenda Abrams, a 30-year-old black businesswoman who was at the courthouse to support the family of the younger accused, said a "big fuss" was being made about Terre’blanche’s death.
"But nobody says anything when black farmworkers are killed," Abrams said.
AWB members still seek to create an all-white republic within mostly black South Africa. The group’s red, white and black insignia resembles a Nazi swastika, but with three prongs instead of four.
The movement always has been on the fringes, estimated to have no more than 70 000 members at its height in the early 1990s out of a population of nearly 50 million.
Terre’blanche was sentenced to six years in jail in 2001 for the attempted murder of former security guard Paul Motshabi in March 1996. He was released in 2004. Motshabi suffered brain damage, and was left paralysed and unable to speak for months after the attack. — Associated Press-HR.
Labels: EUGENE TERREBLANCHE, RACISM, VENTERSDORP
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COMMENT - The irony of course is that De Beers is a company named after two Boer brothers who were cheated out of their farm by South Africa's robber baron in chief, Cecil John Rhodes. :) Where is the de Beers family today?
Terre'Blanche's killing: a sign of a bigger problem in SA
By: Nyarai Chidemo
Posted: Wednesday, April 7, 2010 9:42 am
THE killing of Eugene Terre'Blanche should not surprise anyone in South Africa. Many Zimbabweans and other Africans were killed in xenophobic attacks in that country last year and the year before; but there was no public outcry from the Democratic Alliance, AfriForum or any other Right Wing group in that country.
Anyone who thinks Terre'Blanche's killing was inspired by ANC Youth President Julius Malema's 'Kill The Boer' song should inform us
what inspired the killing of many of our own people in that country.
Malema is being used as a scapegoat by an arrogant lot that does not want to reform in the face of a changing and evolving South Africa. The silencing of Malema signifies an attempt by the Right Wing element to scuttle the quest for development by an impoverished black lot.
Terre'Blanche was simply responsible for his own demise. When he was preaching hatred and division, the DA and AfriForum did not mount a similar outcry. They did not see his divisiveness.
The killing of Terre'Blanche is a sign of the 'sickness' in that country as a whole. South Africa is bleeding and if the millions of black people in that country remain in poverty, there will always be problems.
The target is different this time.
The peace and reconciliation brokered by Bishop Desmond Tutu and others in that country did not have the accompanying material well-being for black people. There might have been change in the complexion and pigmentation of the ruling class, but the black person still lives in poverty.
There are black people who still live in Soweto who have no access to education, healthcare or a decent living. Over a decade after the end of apartheid, they still haven't witnessed a change in their lives. The streets of Johannesburg are more dangerous today than at the time of independence from the minority white rule.
The economy in that country is still very much in the hands of the whites. Huge companies like DeBeers are still milking that country and the huge wealth in that country has not done muchto change the material well-being of the black population.
Terre'Blanche's killing is not an isolated occurence in South Africa. Over 3,000 white farmers have been killed since the end of apartheid. This is a disease in the South African system and it has to be cured before it is too late.
Those stubborn Far Right elements in South Africa who are holding onto power and resisting change will have to accept that the status quo cannot be maintained anymore in that country. There has to be real change otherwise incidents like the killing of Terre'Blanche and many other white farmers will continue.
Their arrogance that they will revenge the killing of their leader will not do much to ease tensions in that country. The Boer is simply outnumbered and they can never win that war. In any case, these people also employ black people on their farms who see the differences in the standard of living daily. Sooner or later those people will start questioning why they still work for the white man, live in poverty, and get treated like slaves and second class citizens in a 'free South Africa'.
Given his views on race relations in South Africa, it was a shock to some of us to learn that Terre'Blanche was employing 'kaffirs' on his farm. Surely it was a no brainer for an avowed white supremacist to employ black workers on his farm. He couldn't have continued spreading ant--black propaganda and employing the same people on his farm; and not paying them, to make matters worse.
But we should never lose sight of what the problem in South Africa is. It is poverty. It is the gap between the rich few (whites, and a few black millionaires and billionaires) and the rest of the black population that lives below the poverty line many years after gaining independence.
That is the South African problem.
______________
Nyarai Chidemo is a Zimbabwean living in South Africa She can be reached via: miss_nyari *** yahoo.co.uk
Labels: APARTHEID, EUGENE TERREBLANCHE, NEOCOLONIALISM, RACISM
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Malema denies responsibility
By Sapa
Tue 06 Apr. 2010, 08:50 CAT [
ANC Youth League president Julius Malema said he was not responsible for the death of Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) leader Eugene Terre Blanche, the SABC reported. Speaking from Zimbabwe, Malema also called for investigations into the murder in order to bring the culprits to book.
"We know who Terre Blanche was and we know how he related with his workers. "Police must investigate, they must look for the person who killed Terre Blanche. We have nothing to do with his death," said Malema.
He vowed to continue singing the struggle song containing the words ‘Kill the Boer' that some political parties and human rights organisations have linked to the murder of Terre Blanche.
He said he began singing the song when he was nine-years-old.
Malema was visiting Zimbabwe on what he called a fact finding mission on nationalisation and land reform when the murder happened.
Terre Blanche was murdered on Saturday after an alleged labour dispute with two of his farmworkers. The two, aged 15 and 21, were arrested and charged with the killing and would appear in court on Tuesday.- Sundaytimes.co.za
Labels: EUGENE TERREBLANCHE, JULIUS MALEMA
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Malema: I'm ready to die
by Staff Reporters
06/04/2010 00:00:00
ANC Youth League firebrand Julius Malema said he was “ready to die” as the South African government moved to calm tensions following the weekend murder of white supremacist leader Eugene Terreblanche.
Anger over the death of the fiery founder of Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB) has shifted to the singing of aan anti-apartheid song, "kill the boer", which is being blamed for triggering Terreblanche’s death. The struggle song has been recently revived by Malema, who has sung it at public gatherings.
But the ANC brushed off accusations of fuelling racial tension amid fears of a bloody backlash.
"Any claim that blacks intend to harm other race groups — (in) particular our white compatriots — is baseless and devoid of all truth," the African National Congress (ANC) said in a statement.
Two of Terreblanche’s former farm workers, including a 15-year-old, were due before the Ventersdorp Magistrate's Court in South Africa’s North West Province early Tuesday charged with last Saturday’s murder.
Police say they have so far failed to link Terreblanche’s murder to politics. Terreblanche was killed in a pay dispute with his two workers, say detectives.
About 50 AWB supporters in khakhis and army fatigues turned up at the Magistrate’s Court holding old South African flags. A number of young children were seen with "100% Boere Seun" and "100% Boere Meisie" from a yellow crate on the pavement.
Pieter Steyn, a commander of the AWB, barred journalists from speaking to individual AWB members and requested that all questions be directed to him.
Speaking to journalists outside the court where two suspects are due to make their first appearance on murder charges, he said: "We are here as a sign of solidarity with Terre'Blanche.
"Our members are heartbroken and angry but we have told them not to take the law into their own hands. We've also instructed them not to make any inflammatory statements.”
However, Steyn and other AWB members were adamant that the murder of Terre'Blanche was political. He said since 1994, some 3,100 farmers were killed in well-planned attacks.
Steyn made a plea to President Jacob Zuma to stop ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema from making “racist and inflammatory statements like Shoot The Boer".
"The murder of Terre'Blanche is another method of land-grabbing. It is different from Zimbabwe but it's close to coming to South Africa," said Steyn.
Defence lawyers for the two murder accused say their trial will hear of the “horrific” mistreatment of farm workers by large scale white land-owners, including Terreblanche who was jailed in 2004 for attempting to kill one of his black workers.
And returning from a four-day visit to Zimbabwe on Monday, Malema said he would not be intimidated by “right wingers”.
Stop Malema ... Terreblanche's fanatics blame Malema for his death
Malema said: "We are unshaken. Nobody, including the right-wingers, can intimidate us in that country. We have more important issues to concentrate on than killing an individual.
"Terreblanche was just an individual and had no influence. When he died he had no influence, including in Afrikaner politics.
"So it is irresponsible of those who want to link the song to the death of Terre'Blanche,
"The song has been sung (since) before I was born. I started singing it when I was nine years old. I don't know why Terreblanche was not killed at that time.
"Today, he is killed and people can't see a reason why Terre'Blanche was killed and they want to associate that with a song.
"It has nothing to do with the song ... we know who Terreblanche was; we know how he related to his workers, so police must investigate and look for the person who killed him.
“People are just mobilising and trying to intimidate us in our own country. If there is anybody who wants to assassinate me, they will find me ready for them.
"I'm not going to be scared of Boers - I've fought them many times before. If they want to fight me they are welcome.
"Before Terreblanche was killed, there was a price tag on my head, but unfortunately (for them) I am alive and somebody else is no more.
"It cannot be that Julius Malema's life is cheaper than the life of somebody else. In their minds, they think they have already killed me. When they practise shooting, they put up my picture and shoot my head.”
British newspapers have warned football fans to prepare for a “blood-bath” during the June 11-July 11 FIFA World Cup being held in South Africa.
But police minister Nathi Mthethwa said: “We do not see any linkage between our hosting of World Cup and the death of Mr Terreblanche.”
Labels: EUGENE TERREBLANCHE, JULIUS MALEMA
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John’s reconciliation
Janneke Weidema Published: 2010/04/06 07:49:05 AM
Eugene Terre Blanche was murdered and the usual stories about murdered farmers and Julius Malema are trotted out. Nary a word about racist farmers or murdered farm workers; and the whining you hear is not a Boeing taking off — it is whites asking what happened to reconciliation.
There is a story I first heard at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that could help us find an answer. It is the story about Themba, John, the bicycle and reconciliation.
John stole Themba’s bicycle, but John went to Themba and said: “Let us be reconciled, I will not steal bicycles any more” and Themba says “Fine, give me my bicycle” and John says “I am talking about reconciliation, not bicycles”.
John now says it will frighten off foreign investment if he has to return the bicycle; that his father stole the bicycle, not he; that his success has nothing to do with the fact that he inherited the bicycle; nobody needs a bicycle to get ahead; Themba should follow John’s example and he too will succeed; and Themba followed John’s example, not forgetting about the bicycle.
Some Thembas now feed at the trough along with the pigs that have had their snouts in the trough all the time; there is a multiracial community around the trough, but the majority is hardly better off. The process is called transformation and has produced anger and frustration. John fears the country is crumbling around him and is raving impotently against BEE, corruption, crime and Julius Malema.
The tenderpreneurs, the criminals, the Terre Blanches and their ilk have to change their behaviour and make amends for the sake of the country, but John does not have to wait for them to change. There is something altogether more effective he can do and it is within his power to do so; he can return the bicycle.
Janneke Weidema
Pretoria
Labels: APARTHEID, EUGENE TERREBLANCHE, NEOCOLONIALISM
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Mother tells how son killed Terre'Blanche
THOMAS PHAKANE AND MICHELLE FAUL | VENTERSDORP, SOUTH AFRICA - Apr 05 2010 15:27
The mother of a 15-year-old murder suspect said on Monday that her son struck Eugene Terre'Blanche with an iron rod after the farmer refused to pay him, a slaying that heightens racial tensions as South Africa prepares to host the Soccer World Cup.
"My son admitted that they did the killing," the mother said in an exclusive interview with AP Television News conducted in Tswana from her two-room cement home in Tshing township on the outskirts of Ventersdorp.
She said she spoke to the teenager at Ventersdorp police station on Saturday after he turned himself in along with his alleged accomplice, a 28-year-old farm worker, following the slaying of Terre'Blanche.
Police have refused to identify either of the suspects by name.
Under South African law, a minor accused of any charge cannot be identified without permission from a judge.
Terre'Blanche (69) was leader of the far-right Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging movement, which said it planned to march on Monday on the police station to demand the police bring out the two suspects. Police say the two have been charged with murder and were expected to appear in court on Tuesday.
Officials appear anxious to show they are swiftly handling the crime, which comes just 10 weeks before South Africa becomes the first African nation to host the Soccer World Cup.
Terre'Blanche's slaying also comes at a time of heightened racial tension in the country.
'Hit him with three blows'
The mother said her 15-year-old son told her that when he and his co-worker asked Terre'Blanche for their money, he told them first to bring in the cows. After they had brought in the cows they again asked for their money, which he then refused to give them.
"He said that the [labourer] man told him to wait while he went to the storeroom. He came back with an iron rod. He started hitting Terre'Blanche, with four blows to the head. Then my son says he took the iron rod and hit him with three blows," the mother said.
"My son was a person who doesn't like to be in trouble," she said softly, appearing a bit bewildered and scared.
At the farm on Monday, a big grader was being used to dig a hole for Terre'Blanche in the family graveyard, where he is to be buried after a church service in Ventersdorp on Friday.
"This was such an unnecessary thing," Terre'Blanche's brother, Andries, said as he sat on a gray marble grave. "We are not racists, we just believe in purity of race."
'Declaration of war'
AWB's members still seek to create an all-white republic within mostly black South Africa.
The group's leaders have been using Terre'Blanche's killing as a rallying point for their cause, with secretary general Andre Visagie claiming on Sunday that Terre'Blanche's brutal death was "a declaration of war" by blacks against whites.
He also warned countries against sending their soccer teams without protection to "a land of murder".
Visagie and other members of the group have blamed African National Congress Youth League leader Julius Malema, saying he spread hate speech that led to Terre'Blanche's killing.
Malema incited controversy last month when he led college students in a song that includes the lyrics "kill the boer".
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 Ayesaba Amagwala [The Cowards are Scared] 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.
Visagie said the 15-year-old suspect was a casual worker and that the 28-year-old man was a full-time employee who had been taking care of the garden of the family home in Ventersdorp.
Terre'Blanche had been spending most of his time there since he had heart surgery a few weeks ago.
Terre'Blanche had previously been convicted for a brutal attack on two black farm workers and was sentenced to six years in prison.
He re-emerged in 2004 as a born-again Christian with renewed vigour for his cause. The movement always has been on the fringes, estimated to have no more than 70 000 members at its height in the early 1990s out of a population of nearly 50-million.
'The murderers kept on beating his body'
Police said Terre'Blanche was lying on his bed when he was attacked between 5pm and 6pm on Saturday.
The mother's account that there was only one murder weapon -- an iron rod -- did not fit police reports that a machete and a knobkerrie were the murder instruments found at the scene.
Visagie said Terre'Blanche was bludgeoned so badly he was barely recognisable and described a gory murder scene indicative of great rage when he visited the farm on Sunday.
"There was blood all over the place, pools on the mattress, the pillow, the floor and splatters on the walls and ceiling," he said.
"The deductions I make is that he was killed almost instantaneously but the murderers kept on beating his body and chopping his corpse with the panga."
Terre'Blanche, who would appear at rallies astride a black horse, founded the movement that was to the right of South Africa's apartheid government in the 1970s. Masked AWB "stormtroopers" in black or khaki uniforms terrorised black South Africans in the years leading up to majority rule. The AWB's red, white and black insignia resembles a Nazi swastika, but with three prongs instead of four. - Sapa-AP
Labels: EUGENE TERREBLANCHE
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Still just another dorpie
MONAKO DIBETLE | VENTERSDORP, SOUTH AFRICA -
Sep 24 2009 10:43
A dejected mongrel slumps on the sunlit, polished stoep of a three-roomed RDP house in Tshing township, Ventersdorp.
Inside, flies buzz around stained energy-saving bulbs. Four old chairs and a table stand on the cracked, dirt floor. Three smiling Jacob Zuma posters adorning the yellow living-room walls strike a more cheerful note, revealing this household’s unquestionable political affiliation. And a giggling voice yells from an adjacent room: “Magtig, ke a mo rata monna yo [I love this man], Msholozi ... man of changes.” Maria Motshabi, the owner of the voice, enters the room and plants a big wet kiss on one of the posters.
But Maria and her brother Paul are the saddest reminders of the racial tension that once swept across Ventersdorp. On a March evening in 1996 Paul, who was the most trusted and envied of Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging leader Eugene Terre’Blanche’s farm workers, got the hiding of his life. The story made international headlines.
“He asked me to kill black people ... my brothers, my sisters ... how can I?” says Paul, teary-eyed and coughing loudly. Hit with a steel pipe on the head, neck and shoulders, Paul suffered brain damage, then a stroke. Six months ago the local clinic diagnosed him with extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis. “I’ve never had so much pills in my entire life.”
In 2000 Terre’Blanche, once white Ventersdorp’s favourite homeboy, was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment for the assault. In 2004 he was released on parole for being “a model prisoner”.
Thirteen years after the assault, Paul has yet to receive payment for the gruesome damage done to his body. His meagre monthly disability grant goes a long way to providing for him and his sister, but not that long.
“It’s hard living ... but we’re used to it,” he says.
Years after the fanatical flying of the Vierkleur and the old Boer republic flags, Ventersdorp remains just another dorpie.
A drive through the decaying farming town, which rests amid green maize fields in the south-western platteland, about 150km west of Johannesburg, speaks volumes about the segregation that once engulfed the region.
CONTINUES BELOW
At the surgery on the corner of Van Tonder Street an irritated receptionist goes to call Herman Schmitz, the doctor who made headlines earlier this year for having two entry points to his practice -- “one for whites and another for blacks”. Inside his peach-walled office, Schmitz hastens to explain his two-door policy: “The front entrance is for people with appointments and the back entrance is for those without appointments. Unfortunately, most of my black patients never make prior arrangements to see the doctor. Now they end up waiting in long queues on the other side of the building.”
Schmitz says after the negative publicity two of his colleagues resigned. “One of them emigrated to Canada ... Tell me who the racist is now? Here I am -- I still work here and I have a very strong bond with my black patients.”
He thinks Venterdorp should “get a new name like all the other places because everywhere you go people still think of it as a very racist town”.
Amid the dust and squalor, it is unsurprising to find that most black residents believe a lot still needs to be done “as a matter of urgency”.
Unemployed Tshing resident Mbulelo Maneli acknowledges that since the mid-1990s racial incidences have declined, “although there are some people who still go around calling whites ‘my baas’ and are being treated horribly by white and Indian shop owners”.
Still, says Maneli, whites and blacks in Ventersdorp no longer live in fear of each other. “The picture remains black and white, but at least we tolerate each other.”
In his view an even sadder development is black-on-black oppression in Ventersdorp “along class lines ... It tears me up when black people inflict pain and create hardship for other black people.”
Jobs for friends, tender irregularities, zero development and lack of employment opportunities are, according to Maneli, “the new apartheid”.
Along the potholed avenues of neighbouring Tshing, calling Ventersdorp mayor Celia Phoyane “black and clueless” is common.
She does not know what she is doing, says community leader Bomber Matinyane. “Tribalism and social classification are turning blacks against one another in Ventersdorp. And if black people can’t tolerate one another, it means the race issue in Ventersdorp is going to take another lifetime to solve. How do you expect white people to treat us?” he asks.
Matinyane blames government institutions and officials for perpetuating racism, saying: “Public institutions need to start promoting nonracial governance. The problem is that institutions that are meant to be healing agents are the ones perpetuating this thing ... racism.”
Back at the Motshabi household, Paul’s bony frame trembles beneath his winter jacket. “I haven’t had a cigarette in months,” he barks. His eyes bulge at the mention of Terre’Blanche. “He is a ruthless man. But my heart does not want to be troubled by him anymore ... God knows. What he did to me, I guess, is what white people came to this world to do to black people, because they always get away with it.”
Monako Dibetle is an education reporter for the Mail & Guardian
Labels: APARTHEID, EUGENE TERREBLANCHE, PAUL MOTSHABE
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Mugabe, Malema discuss Terreblanche murder
by Lebo Nkatazo
05/04/2010 00:00:00
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe and ANC Youth League president Julius Malema have discussed the murder of South African white supremacist leader Eugene Terreblanche during talks in Harare. Mugabe met Malema -- who was concluding a four-day visit to the country as a guest of Zanu PF -- at State House for over two hours on Monday.
With reporters present, Mugabe spoke to Malema at length about Zimbabwe’s land reform programme and what he said was Britain’s failure to honour its obligations to white farmers whose properties were seized for resettlement.
Mugabe also praised South Africa as an unstinting ally against what he said was a global crusade by “imperialists” to remove his government through economic sabotage and propaganda.
Then the Zimbabwean leader, who returned from a trip to Senegal on Sunday, turned to Terreblanche’s murder, asking Malema: “I hear they are trying to blame you?”
[Exactly what I noticed. The murder of Eugene Terreblanche was a dispute over back wages. No one has suggested that the 'farm workers' were spurred on by any song, that they even had a radio, or that Julius Malema is in any way involved. So why is the DA so quick to try and make political hay out of this, without any direct evidence? - MrK]
Before Malema could answer, Mugabe’s press secretary George Charamba stepped in and asked reporters to leave the room.
South Africa’s pro-white opposition Democratic Alliance has sought to draw a link between Terreblanche’s murder, apparently by two farm workers he refused to pay, with Malema’s insistence on singing a liberation song "Dubul' ibhunu", which means "shoot the Boer".
DA MP Juanita Terblanche said: "This happened in a province where racial tension in the rural farming community increasingly is being fuelled by irresponsible racist utterances by .... Julius Malema and the North West COSATU Secretary, Solly Pheto.
"An attack of this nature can be regarded as an attack on the diverse components of the South African democracy. The DA calls for people to remain calm and on the ANC to strongly condemn racist utterances which has become synonymous with Malema and his ilk.”
[The DA would not be the DA if they would draw a connection to the rightlessness many South Africans in places like Ventersdorp still experience. Or would point out that even though only 9-17 white farmers were killed in Zimbabwe during the entire land reform process, in South Africa, which still maintains apartheid era land dispensation, over 3,200 white farmers have been killed. Something else President Mugabe can take credit for. - MrK]
The ANC Youth League has rejected the accusations, with Malema set to make his first public comments on the matter on his return to South Africa later Monday.
Terreblanche was killed as he slept on his bed at his farm outside the town of Ventersdorp, North West Province.
Police said the 69-year-old was beaten to death by two farm workers after a dispute over unpaid wages.
President Jacob Zuma has appealed for calm, saying the killing should not incite racial hatred.
Terreblanche, who campaigned for a separate white homeland, came to prominence in the early 1980s as the champion of a tiny minority determined to stop the process that was bringing apartheid to an end.
Labels: EUGENE TERREBLANCHE, JULIUS MALEMA, LAND REFORM, MUGABE, NEOCOLONIALISM
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Azapo: Terre'Blanche was a killer
2010-04-04 13:10
Johannesburg - Eugene Terre'Blanche, AWB leader, died in the same manner in which he killed black defenceless farm workers in Venterdorp, the Azanian People's Organisation said on Sunday.
"Azapo never rejoiced on the murder of any person, black or white, rich or poor. But the murder of Eugene Terre'Blanche left us with a combination of sadness, awe, confusion and a tinge of suppressed excitement," spokesperson Funani ka Ntontela said.
"We are sad that Mr Terre'Blache died in the manner in which he died, murdered in cold blood. Sadly, this is how he killed black defenceless farm workers in Venterdorp".
The party claimed that Terre'Blanche got away with murder because he was a law unto himself.
"Here is a man whose entire life was dedicated to seeing black people remaining endlessly dwarfed in the land of their birth; a man who never pretended to be anything but a racist and a murderer," said ka Ntontela.
He suggested that government erect a statue in memory of Terre'Blache so that "his ugly face never fades".
The 69-year-old AWB leader was beaten and hacked to death on his farm at Ventersdorp on Saturday evening - allegedly by two workers over a wage dispute. Both have been arrested and charged with murder.
- SAPA
Labels: BOERS, EUGENE TERREBLANCHE, WHITE FARMERS
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COMMENT - What an ignominious end for a socially sanctioned bully and racist. I thought he would have stroked out, had a heart attack, or falling of his horse again. However, he was bludgeoned to death over what seems to be a dispute over unpaid wages. Terreblanche, who himself has been up for attempted murder charges in the past, and his organisation is responsible for countless murders and assaults. Isnt' it ironic, that in the much reviled Zimbabwe, only 9-17 (depending on who you ask) white farmers have been killed in a highly successful land redistribution programme, but in South Africa where land redistrubution has been deferred, 3,200 white farmers have been killed? Eugene Terreblanch is just the latest one. It is time for South Africa to start creating a much fairer society, and give the stolen land back to the people it was stolen from, and use the profits from the mines to develop other industries (manufacturing, agriculture and infrastructure). Isn't it also remarkable to contrast the massive condemnation of Zimbabwe, and barely a blimp that the killing of a white farmer causes in the western media? This is because unlike in Zimbabwe, in South Africa CORPORATE property rights have not been challenged. So stop the farm killings, and redistribute the land.
South African white supremacist hacked to death
By: Reuters-tzg
Posted: Sunday, April 4, 2010 5:45 am
Eugene Terre'Blanche speaks at an Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB) gathering in Pretoria in 1999. Photograph: STR/Associated Press
A NOTORIOUS South African white supremacist who once threatened to wage war rather than allow black rule in that country was hacked to death at his farm yesterday following an argument with two employees. Eugene Terre'Blanche's mutilated body was found on his bed along with a broad-blade knife and a wooden club, police said.
"He was hacked to death while he was taking a nap," one family friend, who did not wish to be named, told Reuters news agency.
South African media quoted a member of Terre'Blanche's Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging party (Afrikaner Resistance Movement, or AWB) as saying that the 69-year-old had been beaten with pipes and machetes.
Police said two males, thought to be workers on the farm, have been arrested and will appear in court on Tuesday.
Terre'Blanche (translatable as either 'white land' or 'white earth' in French), with striking blue eyes and white beard, was the voice of hardline opposition to the end of racial Apartheid in South Africa in the early 1990s, and the AWB was infamous for its swastika-like (Hitlerite) symbols and neo-Nazi anthems.
He had been in relative obscurity since his release in 2004 after a prison sentence for beating a black man nearly to death.
Last year he attempted a comeback, announcing plans to rally far-right groups and to apply to the United Nations for a breakaway Afrikaner republic.
His death comes amid heightened racial tension in South Africa, where AfriForum, a right-wing group in that country, has caused anger by seeking a High Court injunction against ANC youths singing a struggle song with the words, "Shoot the Boer". Terre'Blanche called himself a Boer, which means farmer in Afrikaans.
Civil rights groups say that 3,000 white farmers have been killed since the end of apartheid.
Last week a high court banned ANC youth president Julius Malema from repeating the lyric, but he defied that ban yesterday during a visit to Zimbabwe, where hundreds of Zanu-PF youth joined him in singing that song.
Malema is on a solidarity visit to Zimbabwe where he is addressing revolutionary Zanu-PF youths.
Police in South Africa's North West province said last night that Terre'Blanche had been attacked and killed over an argument about unpaid wages at around 6pm, the South African Press Association reported.
"Mr Terre'Blanche's body was found on the bed with facial and head injuries," Myburgh said.
"There was a panga [broad-blade knife] on him and knobkerrie [wooden club] next to the bed. A 21-year-old man and 15-year-old boy were arrested and charged for his murder.
"The two told the police that the argument ensued because they were not paid for the work they did on the farm." She added that Terre'Blanche was alone with the two workers at the time of the attack.
Terre'Blanche founded the white supremacist AWB in 1970, to oppose what he regarded as the liberal policies of the then South African leader, John Vorster.
His party tried terrorist tactics and threatened civil war in the run-up to South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994, won by the ANC and Nelson Mandela, who became the country's first black president.
In 1998, Terre'Blanche accepted "political and moral responsibility" before South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission for a bombing campaign to disrupt the 1994 elections in which 21 people were killed and hundreds injured.
Terre'Blanche's credibility as a political leader collapsed after the anti-black threats voiced by the extreme white right proved to be little more than bluster. Revelations of his extramarital affairs also undermined his reputation with religious Afrikaners. He was jailed for assaulting a black petrol attendant and the attempted murder of a black security guard, serving three years of a five-year term before his release in 2004.
He said last year that he had revived the AWB after several years of inactivity and that it would join with like-minded forces to push for secession from South Africa. "The circumstances in the country demanded it," he told South Africa's Mail & Guardian newspaper. "The white man in South Africa is realising that his salvation lies in self-government in territories paid for by his ancestors."
Terre'Blanche said he wanted to organise a referendum for those who wanted an independent homeland, where English would be an accepted language along with Afrikaans. "It's now about the right of a nation that wants to separate itself from a unity state filled with crime, death, murder, rape, lies and fraud."
Political analysts say that white extremists have little support, but more than 21 members of the shadowy Boeremag (Boer Force) remain on trial for treason after being arrested in 2001 and accused of a bombing campaign aimed at overthrowing the government.
President Jacob Zuma, who took office in May, has courted Afrikaners at a series of meetings, assuring them they have nothing to fear from his government. Last week he visited an impoverished white community near Pretoria.
But with increasing poverty levels amongst the black population, incidents of racial violence have been on the increase in South Africa, with blacks demanding equal access to the means of production. ANC youths have called for the nationalisation of the country's industry and farms.
Labels: BOERS, EUGENE TERREBLANCHE, LAND REFORM
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