OBITUARY: Terreblanche: A rightwinger made redundant post-apartheid

By Benita van Eyssen Apr 4, 2010, 10:42 GMT

Johannesburg - Eugene Terreblanche, 69, the controversial leader of a small but vocal apartheid-era far-right Afrikaner nationalist party that threatened to go to war to prevent the fall of white minority rule in the 1990s, was battered to death on his farm in South Africa's hinterland.

His murder, around a decade since he was jailed for trying to kill a black farm worker, was not believed to be a racially motivated crime, but reportedly linked to a pay dispute with workers on his farm.

After the first all-race elections in 1994 that brought an end to apartheid, the right-winger had taken to the quiet life on his farm in Ventersdorp, south of Johannesburg.

Many South Africans remember him simply as a relic of the past, a racist firebrand who had stood in the way of transformation, and an ignorant and egotistical buffoon who literally fell off his high horse in 1992.

To his followers he was a charismatic, blood-and-thunder prophet in an uncertain time.

But his death nevertheless saw an outpouring of concern from all quarters of the new South Africa, with even the black politicians he tried to prevent from taking power in the early 1990s calling for calm.

Terreblanche was born in Ventersdorp on January 31, 1944, into a family of 'Afrikaner patriots.' He qualified as a police officer and briefly worked as a bodyguard to politicians before entering politics himself.

He and several fellow 'Afrikaner patriots,' dissatisfied with the 'liberal' position of the nationalists in power, formed the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement, AWB) at the height of apartheid the late 1970s.

The AWB would never amass a large following, but under his flamboyant leadership, it was guaranteed headlines. The moderate Afrikaners and other white South Africans, the beneficiaries of apartheid, were hardly moved by what he had to say; blacks were insensed.

Terreblanche served a short prison term for arms possession in 1983 under the Terrorism Act when authorities uncovered an arms cache on his brother's farm. He returned to resume his political career at the height of black resistance to apartheid and members of his party would in the years that follow have several clashes with police after attempting to disrupt official functions.

The AWB leader had a taste for the theatrical. He gave long, grand speeches, in which he repeated stated - in flowing Afrikaans - the plight of 'my people' in calling for the continued segregation of blacks and whites often took the form of a fiery sermon.

He is also best remembered for public parades in which he would be accompanied by his khaki-clad AWB generals and Iron Guard, most of them on horseback and under their red-and-black flag with its Swastika-style insignia.

On one such occasion, Terreblanche fell when his horse reared unexpectedly. Reports that he was romantically linked to a columnist from a liberal Sunday paper also dealt a blow to his reputation.

The AWB was fingered for a spate of bombings in the tense months leading to elections in April 1994 as then-president FW de Klerk and anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela negotiated power-sharing.

Many today still question whether Terreblanche and his generals ever posed a real threat to the process of transformation that was underway.

By the end of 1994, the AWB had slipped into relative obsurity as Mandela took power, calling for racial reconciliation and meeting with the likes of Betsie Verwoerd, the widow of one of apartheid's architects.

Two years later, Terreblanche was back in the limelight and on trial for the attempted murder of a farm worker. Paul Motshabi had been repeatedly hit over the head with a blunt object.

'It was a vicious assault on a defenceless person,' the presiding judge said in finding Terreblanche guilty and sentencing him to six years in prison. The AWB leader went to prison on horse-back.

A few years ago, Terreblanche was quoted as having told journalists: I have always been made out as a racist, someone who hates black people. I dont hate them. I grew up with them. I just know there are many differences between whites and blacks and I will always believe it.'

In March 2008, Terreblanche was back, announcing that there was no choice but to 'reactivate' the AWB. Few took notice.