‘Guys who killed him are our heroes’
April 07, 2010
Toronto Star
VENTERSDORP, South Africa
Tensions flared as the two farm workers accused of killing South African white supremacist Eugene Terre'Blanche were charged with four crimes, including murder and robbery.
Chris Mahlangu, 28, and a 15-year-old boy appeared in court Tuesday, and were then whisked into a van and away from the courthouse, all to the cheers of dozens of local black residents. They chanted "Hero! Hero!" as the police van sped away.
"They are our heroes because he killed many of our people," said Deboho Thepo. "He injured many. Those guys who killed him are our heroes."
Terre'Blanche, 69, had a reputation for beating and mistreating his workers. He was jailed in 2001 for attempted murder, when he beat one farmworker so badly he left him permanently brain-damaged.
Black residents say openly they are glad he is dead. But they also fear a backlash by the white community in the area – particularly members of Terre'Blanche's Afrikaner Resistance Movement, or the AWB.
Spokesman Pieter Steyn had disavowed earlier claims by AWB members that they would avenge Terre'Blanche's death. The newly elected leader, Steyn van Ronge, announced Tuesday that they were implementing a "security plan" that would protect "our people." He would not elaborate.
AWB supporters and farmers in the area say Terre'Blanche is one of a growing number of victims of state-sanctioned anti-white violence.
"Every week three farmers are murdered – white farmers," says commercial farmer Pieter Marx.
"I'm here today because my family, myself, my parents and innocent people are under threat. If they sing songs like `kill the Boers ... they are rapists,' it's not something of the past – they're singing it now. And they're murdering people, it's happening."
He's referring to the leader of the governing ANC Youth League, Julius Malema, who has made a point recently of singing the apartheid-era song "Kill the Boer" in public – a song widely inferred to mean "Kill the White" or "Kill the Farmer." A high court recently ruled that singing the song in public was unlawful.
The court case is set to resume April 14.
