| Eugène Terre'Blanche | |
|---|---|
| Leader of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging |
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| In office 1973–1997 |
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| In office 2008–2010 |
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| Succeeded by | Steyn van Ronge |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 31 January 1941 Ventersdorp, Transvaal Province, Union of South Africa |
| Died | 3 April 2010 (aged 69) Ventersdorp, North West Province, South Africa |
| Political party | Herstigte Nasionale Party (until 1973) |
| Other political affiliations |
Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging |
| Spouse(s) | Martie Terre'Blanche (m. 19?? – 2010; his death) |
| Children | Bea Terre'Blanche |
| Residence | Ventersdorp, North West Province, South Africa |
| Occupation | Police officer (SAP), farmer, political activist |
| Religion | Afrikaanse Protestantse Kerk (APK) |
Eugène Ney Terre'Blanche (31 January 1941[n 1] – 3 April 2010) was a former member of South Africa's Herstigte Nasionale Party who founded the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) during the apartheid era. During the 1980s and early 1990s, he became known for threatening civil war to maintain white rule in South Africa.[1] After the country's transition to post-apartheid democracy, he revised his stances and urged his followers to push for independence in an independent Afrikaner homeland, which he frequently referred to as a "Boerevolkstaat". Terre'Blanche led the organisation until his death in 2010. He was given several labels during his lifetime, including "white supremacist",[2][3] "nationalist,"[4] and "racist".[5]
Terre'Blanche spent three years in prison for assaulting a black petrol station worker and the attempted murder of a black security guard in 1996. On 3 April 2010, he was hacked and beaten to death on his farm by two labourers, allegedly over a wage dispute. Terre'Blanche's supporters have said that the murder is part of a larger pattern of anti-white "farm murders" in South Africa.[6]
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Terre'Blanche's grandfather fought as a so-called "Cape Rebel" for the Boer cause in the Second Boer War, and his father was a lieutenant colonel in the South African Defence Force.[7]
The progenitor of the Terre'Blanche name (translatable as either 'white land' or 'white earth' in French) in the region was a French Huguenot refugee, Estienne Terreblanche from Toulon (Provence), who arrived at the Cape in 1704, fleeing anti-Protestant persecution in France.[8] The Terreblanche name has generally retained its original spelling though other spellings include Terre'Blanche, Terre Blanche, Terblanche and Terblans.[9]
Born on a farm in the Transvaal town of Ventersdorp on 31 January 1941, Terre'Blanche attended Laerskool Ventersdorp and Hoër Volkskool in Potchefstroom, matriculating in 1962. While in school, he gave early expression to his political leanings by founding the cultural organisation Jong Afrikanerharte (Young Afrikaner Hearts).[7]
He joined the South African Police, and was initially deployed in South West Africa (now Namibia),[10] which had been given to South Africa under a League of Nations Trust mandate after World War I. Upon returning to South Africa proper, he became a Warrant Officer in the Special Guard Unit, which was assigned to members of the Cabinet.[10]
Terre'Blanche's politics differed from the white supremacist apartheid government's policies by emphasizing the supremacy of his Afrikaner identity. He frequently referred to the Afrikaner or pioneering Voortrekkers as "Die wit man" ("The white man"). He emphasized the concept of the Afrikaner/Boer volk as an equally autochthonous ethnic grouping alongside South Africa's indigenous tribes. He also promoted the formation of an Afrikaner state which would be self governed and operate alongside tribal homelands.
During the late 1960s, Terre'Blanche increasingly opposed what he called the "liberal policies" of B. J. Vorster, then Prime Minister of South Africa. After four years of service in the SAP, he resigned to pursue a career in politics, running unsuccessfully for local office in Heidelberg as a member of the Herstigte Nasionale Party.[10]
Disillusioned with the established avenues for political participation, Terre'Blanche founded the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement, AWB) in Heidelberg in 1973,[10] initially as a secret society.[1] The AWB first appeared on the public scene after its members were charged with and fined for tarring and feathering. Floors van Jaarsfeld, a professor of history who had publicly voiced the opinion that the Day of the Vow (previously called Dingaan's Day), a public holiday in remembrance of the Battle of Blood River, was nothing more than a secular event with hardly any real reference point in history.[1] Though Terre’Blanche would later express his regrets regarding the incident when testifying before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he suggested that his convictions relating to the sanctity of the Day of the Vow might make his actions more understandable.[11] In the years that followed, Terre'Blanche's speeches at public gatherings often evoked the Battle of Blood River,[1] and his oratorical skills earned him much support among the white right wing in South Africa; the AWB claimed 70,000 members at its height.[12]
Throughout the 1980s, Terre'Blanche continued to present himself and the AWB as an alternative to both the National Party-led government and the Conservative Party, and he remained staunchly opposed to the reform policies of PW Botha to establish additional, albeit still separate, parliamentary chambers for non-whites, and to grant suffrage to Coloureds and South Africans of Indian origin.[13] The organisation's strongest support was found in the rural communities of South Africa's North, with comparably few supporters in urban areas where his following was largely limited to the middle and lower income Afrikaners.[13]
Terre'Blanche viewed the end of apartheid as a surrender to communism, and threatened full scale civil war if President FW de Klerk handed power to Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress.[1] When De Klerk addressed a meeting in Terre'Blanche's hometown of Ventersdorp in 1991, Terre'Blanche led a protest, and the Battle of Ventersdorp ensued between the AWB and the police, with a number of people killed.[14] Terre’Blanche claimed that it was only when he stood between the police and the AWB and demanded a ceasefire that the shooting ended. Terre'Blanche accused President de Klerk of instigating the riot for political gain. (95) [15]
In an attempt to disrupt the negotiation process in 1993, Terre'Blanche accompanied by General Constand Viljoen and Conservative Party parliamentarian Thomas Langley led an armed invasion of the World Trade Centre in Kempton Park while negotiations were in progress.[16] After a memorandum of grievances were presented to National Party minister Roelf Meyer and Dawie de Villiers and upon concluding and agreement that no arrests would be made, the AWB withdrew from the premises.[17] However that evening several identified AWB leaders were arrested and their wives were incarcerated in Soweto, separately from their husbands.[18] Vlakplaas General Krappies Engelbrecht was appointed to launch an investigation.[19]
Terre'Blanche claimed he and President Lucas Mangope of the predominantly ethnic Tswana Homeland of Bophuthatswana came to a “mutual agreement” on 17 February 1992, to aid each other in the “event of a communist threat” [20] On 4 March 1994 Mangope announced that Bophutatswana would not participate in the South African general election [21] in an effort to maintain Bophutatswana's independence from the Republic of South Africa.[22] Bophuthatswana's minister of justice, Godfrey Mothibe tried in vain to convince Mangope to participate in the election, but then accused the ANC of orchestrating the revolt, which was helped by the stance taken by South Africa's then Minister of Foreign Affairs, P.W. "Pik" Botha. Thousands of ANC supporters were bussed in from areas outside of Bophuthatswana to support the popular uprising. Terre'Blanche claimed a conspiracy by citing a “three-step plan” by the ANC in an effort to destabilize Bophuthatswana, which included ANC infiltration of the Bophuthatswana police and military.[22] However, ANC candidate for the North West Province, Popo Molefe claimed the ANC was merely supporting the people of Bophuthatswana after it became clear that their political freedoms were limited.
Terre'Blanche claimed he had personally communicated with Mangope On 10 March 1994 (107), prior to mobilizing his men to protect the capital Mmabatho against looting and unrest. (110) Officers of the Bophuthatswana Defence Force initially received the AWB militia with “great joy and surprise.” (Vuur en Verraad, Arthur Kemp) The AWB militia assembled in an airport hangar in Mmabatho, where they were to be provided with rations and firearms. Terre'Blanche ordered his men to remove their AWB badges upon the request of the Bophuthatswana Defence Force. While contained at the hangar, an unidentified and independent faction carrying the AWB emblems started shooting indiscriminately at the public. Terre'Blanche concluded that the South African intelligence services may have set up the shooting in order to discredit the AWB, since the media broadcast footage of the individuals' emblems, but did not publicize their identity. (105) The Bophuthatswana police systematically began to remove the media from strategic locations, and the initial hospitality shown to the AWB militia was replaced by contempt. When Bophuthatswana fell into complete anarchy, the AWB withdrew.
The AWB were subsequently defeated while invading Bophuthatswana to prop up the autocratic leader of the bantustan in 1994 and, consequently, Terre'Blanche did not follow up on his earlier threats of war.[17][23][24]
Terre'Blanche was lampooned in the 1991 documentary The Leader, His Driver and the Driver's Wife, directed by British filmmaker Nick Broomfield. A sequel, His Big White Self, was first broadcast in February 2006. Terre'Blanche was also interviewed by Louis Theroux in episode 3.3 "Boer Separatists" of the BBC series Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends.[25]
In 1988, the AWB was beset by scandal when claims of an affair with journalist Jani Allan surfaced. In July 1989, Cornelius Lottering, a member of the breakaway Orde van die Dood group, orchestrated a failed assassination attempt on Allan's life by placing a bomb outside her Sandton apartment.[26]
Broomfield's 1991 documentary claimed Terre'Blanche had an affair with the Sunday Times journalist; a claim she denied as well as her portrayal in the documentary. This led to Allan taking libel proceedings against the documentary broadcaster Channel 4 in 1992 in the London High Court. During the trial, several transcripts of their alleged sexual relationship appeared in the South African and British press.[27] Terre'Blanche submitted a sworn statement to the London court denying he had had an affair with Allan. In a rare interview with the Afrikaans Sunday newspaper Die Rapport, his wife Martie Terre'Blanche denounced the rumors. Although the judge found that Channel 4's allegations had not defamed Allan, he did not rule on whether or not there had been an affair.[28] The South African business newspaper Financial Mail published a lead story on 6 August detailing the theory that F.W. de Klerk had orchestrated the libel case to discredit Terre'Blanche and the far right movement in South Africa.[29]
Terre'Blanche was widely ridiculed after he was filmed falling off his horse during a parade in Pretoria. After his murder the state-owned SABC said on the evening news that he would be remembered "as a failed horseman".[30] Terre'Blanche claimed the media only showed part of the fall and explained that unedited footage of the incident would show that the horse had slipped.[31] He accused the media of double standards in reporting when praising Mbhazima Shilowa when he fell from, but immediately remounted his horse.[31]
In 2004, he was controversially voted No. 25 in SABC3's Great South Africans from a list of 100 South African personalities.[32] Controversy over the list led the SABC to cancel the television series.
Following the end of apartheid, Terre'Blanche and his supporters sought amnesty for the storming of the World Trade Centre, the 'Battle of Ventersdorp', and other acts.[33][34] Amnesty was granted by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.[14]
In March 2008, the AWB announced the re-activation of the political party, for 'populist' reasons, citing the encouragement of the public. Reasons for the return have been attributed principally to attacks on commercial farmers and ethnic Boers, the electricity crisis, corruption across government departments and rampant crime.[35] Throughout April 2008, Terre'Blanche was to be the speaker at several AWB rallies, encompassing Vryburg, Middelburg, Mpumalanga and Pretoria.[36]
He had been calling for a “free Afrikaner republic”, and had vowed to take his campaign to the United Nations' International Court of Justice in The Hague in a bid to secure this. He favored large tracks of land that had been purchased from the ethnic Swazis in the eastern portion of the South African Republic, from the Zulus in northern Natal, and others, as well as largely uninhabited portions [37] of the interior that had been settled by the Voortrekkers. In June 2008, it was announced that the AWB Youth Wing would be launched and Terre'Blanche was to be its founding member.[38]
In a recent video interview, he voiced his objection to a proposal to change the iconic Springbok emblem of the South Africa national rugby union team (Springboks). He stated that the Springbok emblem could be replaced with an impala or kudu for sports teams representing the new Afrikaner republic.[39]
In September 2009 he addressed a 3-day convention attended by 300 Afrikaners which was intended to develop a strategy for "Boer liberation". Terre'Blanche reinforced earlier claims for land in Northern Natal and the Eastern Transvaal.[40] In October 2009 several right-wing groups led by Terre'Blanche outlined their future plans at a Ventersdorp meeting. In an interview with the Mail and Guardian he said he wanted to unite 23 organisations under one umbrella, in order to take, as he had vowed, the fight of "the free Afrikaner" to the International Court of Justice.
In an interview with the Mail and Guardian, he stated that he would publish his biography, Blouberge van Nimmer (The Blue Mountains of Long Ago), in December 2009.[41] The biography was ready for press at the time of his death and published under then name “My Storie”, as told to Amos van der Merwe. A complaint was lodged in December 2009 with the South African Human Rights Commission regarding inflammatory comments he was alleged to have made.[42][43]
On 17 June 2001, Terre'Blanche was sentenced to six years in prison, of which he served three years, for assaulting a petrol station worker and the attempted murder of a security guard in 1996.[2] He denied both accusations and insisted on his innocence.
One of only three whites in the Rooigrond prison near Mafikeng, during his time in prison he claimed to have become a born-again Christian[44] He claimed to have moderated many of his more racist views.[45]
Terre'Blanche was released on 11 June 2004[46] and the AWB website claims these court cases and other scandals involving him were fabricated by the "Black Government and the left wing media".[12]
Paul Motshabi was permanently disabled when he was beaten up by Terre'Blanche in 1996. He was crippled and intellectually impaired by brain damage sustained in the attack, and his wife left him. He was one of 16 victims of violence in the South Africa's North West who received new houses as part of the national government's campaign to mark sixteen days of activism against violence against women and children.[47]
Terre'Blanche continued to maintain his innocence in the Motshabi case, citing that he had discovered Motshabi already beaten when he found him in a park while patrolling Ventersdorp after which he took him to the hospital. Although he was not present when the alleged attack happened, Gabriel Kgosimang, an ex-employee of Terre'Blanche, testified that his former employer had repeatedly beaten Motshabi over the head, upper body, neck and shoulders after he crashed into him with his vehicle. The official medical report only cites a single hit to the head.[48]
Twelve years later a policeman revealed that it had not been Terre'Blanche who had attacked Motshabi, and disclosed the names of the two culprits. Terre'Blanche claimed he feared the same powers that were active at Vlakplaas and chose not to make their names public. However, he stated that the identity of the attackers were contained in a sealed envelope and kept in safekeeping and that instructions were given that this information would be released in case something “unnatural” would happen to him.[49] These names have not yet been released despite the murder of Terre'Blanche. Terre'Blanche claimed innocence in the case of John Ndizima, suggesting a bogus case had been built against him in order to “bury the conservative element of Afrikaner-nationalism in the shallow grave of injustice”.[49] Terre’Blanche cites that he interviewed Ndizima as the only eye witness of a burglary at a pharmacy in Ventersdorp. Ndizima claimed a white man with a white shirt with fine white lines had broken the window with a rock and had ran off. Terre'Blanche countered that Ndizima could not have seen such details from a 200 meter distance in the middle of the night, and suggested that Ndizima had alerted the thief of his presence. Terre'Blance then claimed that following a heated argument his dog broke loose and chased Ndizima, whereafter Terre'Blanche restrained the dog. Terre'Blanche raised the question of why neither Ndizima nor the state prosecution could explain why there was no blood on his overall that had been submitted as evidence. Terre'Blanche pointed out that his defense attorney suddenly resigned as member of the ultra-conservative white Conservative Party's Volksraad and joined the ANC shortly after the conclusion of the court case.[49]
Prior to the 1994 multi-racial elections, Terre'Blanche's Afrikaans-language works were on the state syllabus of Natal schools. Upon his release from jail, he quoted Wordsworth's poem I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud. He had previously released a CD of his poetry collection and most recently a DVD. The DVD was named "Inktrane", which is directly translated to English as "ink tears". This DVD was released through 11.3% Motion Pictures (Pty) Ltd. [36][50]
Terre'Blanche, who had lived in relative obscurity since the collapse of his organisation,[51] was murdered on his farm Villana, just outside Ventersdorp, on 3 April 2010. He was reportedly beaten to death with pipes and pangas (machetes), while napping, by two black males (then aged 28 and 15), allegedly over a wage dispute. His daughter Bea told the media that the two workers had not been paid for March because her father could not get his banking in order before the Easter weekend, and that an arrangement had been made to pay them after the weekend. She stated that he had enjoyed a good relationship with his employees, which had been strengthened by their work with animals on the farm.[52] His body was found on the bed with facial and head injuries.[53][54][55][56][57][58][59] Speculation that Terre'Blanche had sexually assaulted one or both of the accused was raised in certain publications.[60][61][62]
Ventersdorp police said two suspects were taken into custody over his killing;[63] they were both charged with murder, and one was released on bail.[64] South African President Jacob Zuma, who followed up an overnight statement with a televised address[65] called for calm and for "responsible leadership"[65] following the murder, describing it as a "terrible deed";[51][66] and described the murder as "cowardly".[67]
Zuma's words were echoed by the AWB and organisations including AfriForum and Solidarity. Minister of Police Nathi Mthethwa Commissioner of police, Bheki Cele and other high ranking police officials,[65] and politicians[68] visited Terre'Blanche's family in Ventersdorp the morning after the murder to express sympathy with the family.[69][70]
The murder took place amid a racial controversy in South Africa involving the singing of a song by African National Congress Youth League leader Julius Malema[51][51][65] which includes the lyrics "Shoot the Boer" ("Dubul' ibhunu").[3][70] The ANC, which had previously defended its right to sing the song, announced that it would consider a moratorium on the singing of the song, following the murder, in the interests of national cohesion.[65] The murder would "inflame tensions" in South Africa, Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille said.[71] Malema denied the song had anything to do with the murder, and defended his singing of it, saying he was "ready to die", and that he was "not scared of Boers", in reference to threats, later retracted, that Terre'Blanche would be avenged.[72] ANC leaders later announced a temporary ban on the singing of the song.[73]
ANCYL president Malema promoted land reform and more transfers of farmland from whites to black South Africans. Malema visited Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe to learn more about socialism and land reform. Upon his return to South Africa he reported that Mugabe and his war veterans would assist in the transfer of land. [74] The older of the accused men was a Zimbabwean. The accused's announcement to other farm workers that he was "now their boss" fueled suspicions that the murder was politically motivated. Members of the African National Congress (ANC) have supported the accused by turning up to the court in huge numbers, and singing other revolutionary songs.[75] Terre'Blanche supporters also turned at the court, singing the former South African national anthem, “Die Stem van Suid Afrika”.[76]
The two suspects appeared in court in Ventersdorp on 6 April 2010, amid racially charged scenes,[77] and were charged with murder, robbery and crimen injuria, for injuring the dignity of Terre'Blanche by leaving his pants pulled down after killing him. The AWB retracted earlier calls to avenge the murder, and President Jacob Zuma appealed for peace.[78]
Thousands attended Terre'Blanche's funeral, held at noon on 9 April 2010 at Ventersdorp's Protestant Church. Later the same day, he was buried on his farm.[79]
Terre'Blanche's murder has been linked to attacks on farmers in South Africa.[6][77][80]