Terreblanche – a history of violence
09/04 13:36 CET
Eugene Terreblanche founded the Afrikaner’s Resistance Movement alongside six others in 1972 as a shadowy group seeking to protect the rights of the Boers’ descendants.
White right-wing activity in South Africa died down
after the end of white minority rule in 1994.
But the AWB remained active politically and militarily.
In 1998, Terreblanche admitted “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.
Despite the Commission’s findings, violence and Terreblanche were always close partners.
He served six months in prison in 2000 for assaulting a petrol attendant and setting his dog on him.
A year later, he was jailed for the attempted murder of a farm-worker whom he beat so badly in 1996 that the man was left brain damaged.
He was later jailed for assaulting a security guard and released in 2004.
http://www.euronews.net/2010/04/09/terreblanche-a-history-of-violence-/~~~~~~~The death of Eugene Terre'Blanche
Apr 6th 2010, 14:28 by Lexington
NEITHER the fact nor the manner of his murder was surprising. Eugene Terre'Blanche was beaten to death in his sleep on Saturday, allegedly by a couple of disgruntled employees.
The founder of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement) was a man whose private life matched his politics. In public, he espoused a violent brand of racism. The National Party, which founded apartheid, was too soft, he reckoned. Only war could prevent South African blacks from getting the vote. When he gave the word, he boasted, tens of thousands of boers would rise and fight for white supremacy.
It didn't quite work out that way. On March 11th, 1994, when the first all-race elections were only a month away, a stand-off was underway in Boputhatswana, a tinpot "black homeland" that was about to be absorbed into the new South Africa. Lucas Mangope, the stooge in charge of Bophutatswana, stood to lose his power under the new order, so he had invited some conservative white commandos to come and prop him up. He had specifically not invited the AWB, but they came anyway.
Summoned via the farmers' radio network, about 100 of Terre'Blanche's khaki-shorted followers invaded Boputhatswana in their bakkies (pick-up trucks). As ill-disciplined as they were bloodthirsty, they shot and killed black pedestrians at random. It did not occur to them, apparently, that anyone would shoot back. But Mangope's police force, corrupt though they were, would not sit by and watch a massacre. They shot three AWB members dead. The rest fled in disorder.
And that was that for the white counter-revolution in South Africa. The less loopy white conservative leaders put as much distance between themselves and Terre'Blanche as they could. Some laid down their arms and decided to take part in the election. Terre'Blanche's supporters set off some bombs to disrupt the poll, but blacks still turned out to vote in their millions.
In private, Terre'Blanche was no nicer. After apartheid ended, he spent three years in jail for beating one black worker into a coma and assaulting another.
His only positive contribution to South Africa was unintentional. By making his cause look ridiculous, he weakened it.
More:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/lexington/2010/04/eugene_terreblanche_risible_racist_dies
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