Two blacks on trial for murder of South African white supremacist

Jan 30, 2012, 10:06 GMT

Johannesburg - A small group of protesters gathered outside the court in South Africa where a black man and teenager were being tried Monday for the murder of Apartheid-era white supremacist leader Eugene Terre'Blanche.

Radio reports said the protesters were white extremists.

Terre'Blanche headed the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement, AWB), which threatened to go to war to prevent the end of white minority rule in the 1990s.

He was beaten to death on his farm south of Johannesburg in April 2010 and two black farm workers employed by him at the time of his death were later arrested. The 28-year old defendant has told the court he had acted in self-defence.

The trial sparked protests by his whites supporters and racial tensions, protests and lively debate beyond the town of Ventersdorp in the country's North West Province where it opened last year.

Hearings have focused on forensic evidence in the case.

Members of Terre'Blanche's family are among the witnesses scheduled to appear in court.

As a political party, the AWB represented a small but vocal segment of South Africa's white Afrikaner population in the 1980s and 1990s. It carried out several attacks in the run-up to all-race elections in 1994.

Support for the group has declined dramatically since, with membership estimated at a few thousand.