Terre’ Blanche, whose colorful life has been dodged by allegations of sexual assaults, especially on young men, also served time in 2001 for attempted murder of a Black farm worker and assault on a Black security guard at a gas station.
[London Bridge Is Falling]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/06/terreblanche-murder-suspects-court-tensions
He led a divisive, hateful and violent life and met with a brutal end.
Eugene Terre’ Blanche, the South African White supremacist was killed on April 3 at his farm by two Black farm workers allegedly due to an pay dispute. It is alleged that his farm workers regularly suffered abuse, with pay regularly withheld.
Puna Moroko, lawyer for one of the accused, Chris Mahlangu, 28, has to a South African newspaper that his client told him he and the other were accused were given large quantities of alcohol by Terre’ Blanche, who then attempted sodomy.
Eyewitnesses reported seeing the AWB White supremacist leader buying liquor with the two workers before taking them back to the farm where he was later found dead with his pants down.
Terre’ Blanche was a prominent figure at the height of apartheid, opposing any ideals of a multi-racial democratic society. He later became disillusioned with the National Party, regarding their views to be too liberal and in 1973, formed the far right organization, Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging, commonly known as AWB.
The objective of this organization was dedication to the “maintenance and improvement of quality of life for Afrikaners” as the Dutch descendants who enforced apartheid are known.
Terre’ Blanche considered the handing of power over to majority Black rule a “surrender to communism” and vowed to fight this by any means necessary. He regularly called for Afrikaners to arm themselves and stated, “my task is to defend my people against ideas to destroy my people.” He further stated, post apartheid, that it was not exciting that the people who built the highways and schools were no longer in government.
He lamented that Afrikaners were “no longer safe in their beloved” South Africa. They were regularly attacked, they were no longer eligible for a lot of high profile government positions and lucrative business deals and alleged their women were raped whilst they watched. Are these outrageous comments not just a tad insensitive and hypocritical, bearing in mind what Black South Africans endured during the years of apartheid and thereafter?
Is the life, livelihood and dignity of the Afrikaner of greater significance than that of Africans? I do not advocate for violence against White South Africans, merely against the ramblings of racist ideals.
Societies will always have differences, be it racial, cultural, religious, sexual-orientation and mores, and so forth. Peace and harmony will only prevail if such differences are respected and protected by law.
The killing of Terre’ Blanche has caused uproar in South Africa among the supporters and sympathizers of AWB. They smell conspiracy involving “lawless” people, members of the African National Congress (ANC), and regard this as a declaration of war to White South Africa.
Although the police maintain that this killing was not politically motivated, fingers are being pointed at Julius Malema, the ANC youth leader, for singing “kill the boer,” a song from the liberation struggle era, at a recent rally.
Racial tension, which was fragile at best of times is at an all time high. Until his death, Terre’ Blanche continued to push for a separatist state for Afrikaners within South Africa, submitting that Afrikaners were entitled to Transvaal and the Orange Free State whilst the rest of the population could have Johannesburg.
In the early 1980s, AWB group developed a plan to infest Sun City Hotel complex in Bophuthatswana with syphilis germs and blow up several racially desegregated hotels in order to stop Whites and Blacks cohabiting.
In 1993, an AWB vehicle smashed into the World Trade Centre in Jo’burg during talks to end apartheid. It seems like the modus operandi of AWB is to break up meetings, intimidate people and take the law into their own hands; much like the Tea Party, as we saw with their futile and racially charged protests in Washington D.C. during the closing days of healthcare reform debate, or those who disrupted the Town Hall meetings last summer.
Just like some Tea Party participants, some AWB members wore uniform or were heavily armed.
Terre’ Blanche, whose colorful life has been dodged by allegations of sexual assaults, especially on young men, also served time in 2001 for attempted murder of a Black farm worker and assault on a Black security guard at a gas station.
His death, while tragic to his supporters and AWB sympathisers may have brought to an end one of South Africa’s most divisive and non progressive organizations.
President Jacob Zuma has called for calm and said the killing was cowardly.
Allimadi writes for The Black Star News from London
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