Thread: White Supremacist leader killed in South Africa

South Africa's white-supremacist leader Eugene Terreblanche was bludgeoned to death by two of his farm workers Saturday in an apparent dispute over wages, police said, amid growing racial tensions in the once- white-led country.

Mr. Terreblanche, 69, was leader of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging movement, better known as the AWB, that wanted to create three all-white republics within South Africa in which blacks would be allowed only as guest workers.

The opposition Democratic Alliance party blamed increasing racial tensions for the killing.

“This happened in a province where racial tension in the rural farming community is increasingly being fuelled by irresponsible racist utterances” by two members of the governing African National Council, said the Democratic Alliance legislator for that constituency, Juanita Terblanche.

Ms. Terblanche, no relative of the far-right leader, said her party did not share his political convictions but warned that the attack on him could be seen as an attack on the diverse components of South Africa's democracy.

President Jacob Zuma appealed for calm following “this terrible deed.” In a statement, he asked “South Africans not to allow agent provocateurs to take advantage of this situation by inciting or fuelling racial hatred.”

The killing comes 10 weeks before South Africa prepares to host the first World Cup soccer tournament on African soil, with massive expenditures on infrastructure being questioned as hundreds of thousands of tickets and hotel rooms remain unsold.

The South African Press Association quoted police spokeswoman Adele Myburgh as saying that Mr. Terreblanche was attacked by a 21-year-old man and a 15-year-old boy who worked for him on his farm outside Ventersdorp, about 110 kilometres northwest of Johannesburg.

Ms. Myburgh said the alleged attackers have been arrested and charged with murder. She said the two, whom she did not identify by name, told the police that there had been a dispute because they were not paid for work they had done on the farm.

“Mr. Terreblanche's body was found on the bed with facial and head injuries.” She said a machete was found on his body and a knobkerrie — a wooden staff with a rounded head — next to his bed.

Mr. Terreblanche had threatened war on South Africa's white minority government in the 1980s when it began to make what he considered dangerous concessions to blacks that endangered the survival of South Africa's white race.

A symbol of white resistance to democratic black majority rule, he had lived in relative obscurity in recent years but had not changed his views.

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White-supremacist leader Eugene Terreblanche killed in South Africa - The Globe and Mail

Geez, while this guy is an obvious racist bastard, his murder isn't going to help race-relations in South Africa, even though his murder doesn't appear to have been politically motivated.

A top member of a South African white supremacist group said Sunday that the slaying of their leader was “a declaration of war” by blacks against whites, as the president appealed for calm amid growing racial tensions in the once white-led country.

Andre Visagie of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging movement, better known as the AWB, said the group would also urge soccer teams to avoid the upcoming World Cup tournament in South Africa out of safety concerns. He said the group would avenge the Saturday death of leader Eugene Terreblanche, but did not give details.

“The death of Mr. Terreblanche is a declaration of war by the black community of South Africa to the white community that has been killed for ten years on end,” Visagie said. He echoed other members of the group in blaming a fiery youth leader for spreading hate speech that he believes led to his killing.

The ruling African National Congress disputed Visagie's statement.

“The black community has never declared war on any other nationality in South Africa,” ANC spokesman Jackson Mthembu told The Associated Press. “It is in fact incorrect and these are sentiments that fuel polarization of the South African populace.”

President Jacob Zuma appealed for calm following “this terrible deed.” In a statement, he asked “South Africans not to allow agent provocateurs to take advantage of this situation by inciting or fueling racial hatred.”

Terreblanche's violent death — police said he was bludgeoned to death by two of his farm workers in an apparent wage dispute — also heightened the din around an ongoing controversy over ANC Youth Leader Julius Malema's performance last month of an apartheid-era song that advocates killing white farmers.

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White supremacist's killing a &lsquo;declaration of war' - The Globe and Mail

Geez, things are going from bad to worse.