Scene of the murder: The bed upon which AWB leader Eugene Terre’Blanche was killed on his farm on the outskirts of Ventersdorp, is pictured on Monday.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos
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
Source: Mail & Guardian Online
Web Address: http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-04-05-mother-tells-how-son-killed-terreblanche
Terre'Blanche killing: AWB vows revenge
Apr 05 2010 06:21
The Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) has vowed to exact revenge for the death of their leader as the country's president, Jacob Zuma, sought to calm growing racial tensions.
Eugene Terre'Blanche, leader of the AWB movement, was found bludgeoned and hacked to death on Saturday at his farm in Ventersdorp. Two black farm workers involved in an apparent wage dispute were arrested at the scene.
The AWB has since ramped up the language of a race war. Its spokesperson, Andre Visagie, said: "The death of Mr Terre'Blanche 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."
Land of murder
Visagie warned other countries to avoid sending their teams to the Soccer World Cup in June as they would be travelling "to a land of murder". He added: "We will decide upon the action we are going to take to avenge Mr Terre'Blanche's death."
The AWB accused African National Congress Youth League leader Julius Malema of having blood on his hands. It blamed the killing on his recent singing of the apartheid-era protest song Ayesaba Amagwala [The Cowards are Scared].
Malema expressed fear that his life was at risk, citing a right-wing conspiracy. Last week the ANC said it was concerned about an SMS in circulation which appeared to offer a bounty for his death. The ANC has defended the song as no more than a way to remember a history of oppression, but a party spokesperson said it would now re-examine the issue in the light of recent criticism.
On Sunday at Ventersdorp, in the North West Province, AWB followers clad in paramilitary khaki laid flowers at the gate of Terre'Blanche's farm.
The 69-year-old was killed by two farm workers who claimed that he refused to pay them their monthly salaries of R350 rand each. The workers, aged 21 and 15, reportedly smashed a window to enter Terre'Blanche's home and killed him with a knobkerrie and a panga. A police source told the Sunday Times the pair alleged Terre'Blanche had threatened to kill them when they went to his farm for their money. "They claim they killed him in self defence," the officer said.
The men, who were said to have waited for police to arrive and arrest them, are due to appear in court on Tuesday.
The killing sparked fierce debate on race relations in a country where white farmers have become increasingly vocal, claiming thousands of them have been murdered since the end of white minority rule in 1994.
Last month the former president F W De Klerk wrote to Zuma warning that Malema was creating an increasingly febrile mood. He said: "All this is beginning to create a volatile atmosphere in which any additional intemperate statement or action might spark an unfortunate incident."
Explosive case
Frans Cronje, deputy director of the South African Institute of Race Relations, said: "It could be an explosive case, especially if the ANC don't back down."
Zuma appealed for calm following the "terrible deed". In a statement he asked South Africans not to allow "agent provocateurs" to take advantage of the situation by "inciting or fuelling racial hatred".
Political leaders in South Africa must "think" before they make statements, which could be "misunderstood", Zuma said on South African Broadcasting Corporation radio on Saturday.
"This happening must indeed say to us as leaders we need to think before we make statements in public that might be misunderstood to be encouraging the opposite of what we are trying to do -- to build our new nation -- irrespective of what quarter they come from, so that no one could attempt to say that what we say is not helping the process of nation-building"
On Sunday night, Zuma said calm needed to prevail in South Africa.
"All leaders who lead this country, from different political formations and non-governmental organisations, should unite in the call for calm.
"I know for a fact that those who have been close to Mr Terre'Blanche, they must be feeling a pain, but it is this time that we take our leadership responsibility to make this country unite in calling for a stop of violence," said Zuma. "Violent crime must be stopped and defeated by all of us."
Zuma, who said Terre'Blanche's murder was a "sad moment" for the country termed the act "cowardly".
"I condemn this cowardly act and the murder of Mr Terre'Blanche. It's not acceptable in our society. In due course we will know what is it that led to this terrible action."
'Has-been personality'
Jackson Mthembu, an ANC spokesperson, also denied any causal link between the protest song and the murder of Terre'Blanche. But he also appeared to shift the party's position: "The ANC is prepared to look at whether it is appropriate to continue singing it in this manner. We will ... look at what we can do."
The opposition Democratic Alliance warned of a risk of polarisation with a dangerous outcome. Leader Helen Zille, said: "The murder of Eugene Terre'Blanche will inevitably polarise and inflame passions in South Africa at a time when tensions are already running high ... This could have tragic consequences and it is essential that all leaders stand together now and call for calm."
Terre'Blanche had threatened war on South Africa's white minority government in the 1980s when it began to make what he considered dangerous concessions that endangered South Africa's white race. Described yesterday as a bully and buffoon, his predictions of doom under a multiracial democracy proved hollow and his support dwindled to a tiny rump.
"He was a has-been personality," said Allister Sparks, a veteran political analyst. "His influence is absolutely minimal. I regarded him as one of the most remarkably powerful orators I've ever heard. He spoke with a great passion and could really move people, but that was before 1994 when he was trying to mount his rather crazy resistance campaign." -
Sapa, guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2010
Source: Mail & Guardian Online
Web Address: http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-04-05-terreblanche-killing-awb-vows-revenge
AWB warned to stay away from court
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA Apr 06 2010 07:37
North West public safety minister Howard Yawa on Monday warned the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) against marching to the Ventersdorp Court on Tuesday.
A 21-year-old man and a 15-year-old boy have been arrested for allegedly killing AWB leader Eugene Terre'Blanche on his farm on Saturday. They were expected to appear in the Ventersdorp Magistrate's Court on charges of murder on Tuesday.
Yawa warned that any person who participates in the illegal march would be arrested.
Yawa said the march had apparently been organised to demand the handover of the two suspects.
"Our constitutional democracy enjoins all of us to defend the rule of law at all costs” said Yawa in a statement.
Yawa welcomed the retraction of a threat to avenge Terre'Blanche's death by the AWB.
AWB spokesperson Pieter Steyn retracted their threat to avenge their leader's death on Monday after declaring war on Sunday.
Yawa described this decision as a "sensible and positive development".
'They did the killing'
The mother of a 15-year-old suspect said on Monday that her son struck Terre'Blanche with an iron rod after the farmer refused to pay him.
"My son admitted that they did the killing," the mother said 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.
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 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.
Cool tensions
The African National Congress on Monday brushed off accusations of fuelling racial tension amid fears of a bloody backlash.
Anger over the death of the AWB founder has shifted to the singing of Ayesaba Amagwala [The Cowards are Scared], which is being blamed for triggering the leader's death.
The provocative anti-apartheid song has been recently revived by ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema, who has sung it at public gatherings.
"Any claim that blacks intend to harm other race groups -- [in] particular our white compatriots -- is baseless and devoid of all truth," the ANC said in a statement.
"Let us not add fuel to an already very sensitive atmosphere in the wake of Mr Terre'Blanche's death by making unfounded and dangerous speculative statements," the party said.
The youth leader has rejected the accusations which were carried on the front page of Monday's Beeld newspaper with the headline, "The song is the culprit".
"We have nothing to do with his death," Malema told reporters in Harare on Tuesday while on a visit to Zimbabwe hosted by President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF youth.
"I am not going to be terrorised by right-wingers in our country. I am not scared."
The right-winger's funeral on Friday is expected to draw hundreds of AWB supporters.
The extremist leader -- found with a machete still embedded in his flesh -- will be buried on his farm. - Sapa, AFP
Source: Mail & Guardian Online
Web Address: http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-04-06-awb-warned-to-stay-away-from-court
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