The white supremacist Eugene TerreBlanche, who sought to rally Afrikaners to resist the end of apartheid, was killed Saturday on his farm by workers there, police officials said. Mr. TerreBlanche, who was sentenced to six years in prison in 1997 for beating one of his black workers and setting his dogs on a gas station attendant, was beaten to death by workers on his farm on Saturday who said they had argued with him over unpaid wages, the police told the South African Press Association.
Capt. Adele Myburgh, a spokeswoman for the North West Province police, said a 21-year-old man and a 15-year-old boy had been arrested and charged with Mr. TerreBlanche’s murder, according to SAPA.
Mr. TerreBlanche, for whom conflicting ages have been given, but SAPA reported as being 69, has periodically tried to revive his right-wing political party in recent years. But he had become basically irrelevant in modern-day South Africa, a well-established, multiracial democracy. During the talks to end apartheid in the early 1990s, Mr. TerreBlanche agitated for all-white republics within South Africa where blacks could only live as guest workers. In 1993, hundreds of his armed supporters in the Afrikaner Resistance Movement stormed constitutional negotiations to protest the approach of majority rule in predominantly black South Africa. He called for a boycott of the first democratic elections in 1994 that brought Nelson Mandela to power.
Captain Myburgh was quoted as saying that “Mr. TerreBlanche’s body was found on the bed with facial and head injuries.” She said a machete-like knife and a traditional knobkerrie club were found near him.
Source: New York Times
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