South Africa after the death of Terre Blanche:
A murder, but no race war
It was a brutal murder: Two young black men killed Eugene Terre Blanche, the far-right Buren. Nevertheless, the act is a prelude to a race war in the country of South Africa’s World Cup – not change anything too strong images. By Marc Goergen, Johannesburg
A young member of the extreme right, white “resistance movement” AWB demonstrated on the first day of hearings of the murderers by Eugene Terre Blanche
It should not have done much outside of South Africa, which has said the name of Eugene Terre Blanche until last weekend, something. The leader of the extreme right-wing Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB), the Afrikaner Resistance Movement was, even in South Africa as a relic from a savage past. His murder made him more alive than he had in the past 15 years ever – especially, it seems, abroad.
The death was brutal. Terre Blanche was brutally assassinated two employees on his farm with knives and machetes, then have him bare his killers apparently still. Maybe it was about unpaid salaries. Maybe it was simply vengeance – Terre Blanche was a racist who paid his employees lousy and probably sometimes suggested. Not surprisingly, therefore, that the South African Press revels in the details of the action. The blood-soaked bed. The knocked out tooth, which was found on the floor.
Racists make backtracking
The more surprising, however, the interest from overseas. Dozens of foreign reporters flocked to the first hearing on Tuesday of two suspects. And there was the expectable pictures outside the courthouse: Boer farmers on the one hand, black workers on the other, in between the barbed wire. 64 days prior the start of the football World Cup is like no other country targeted by the world press, and a murder of a white-bearded old Buren by two young blacks seems as if summoned to declare a race war. The fact that the AWB has first called for revenge is like reported. The fact that he has withdrawn this oath the next day, barely.
Certainly, race is always special and just a very sensitive issue in South Africa. The populist leader of the ANC Youth Organization Julius Malema was banned just from the highest court of the country to sing in public a battle song, which announced the killing of the Boers. So far, the 29-year-old seems to care little – on a visit to Zimbabwe he agrees with a strong back. And anyway the walls between the races are high. A quarter of all South Africans, which resulted in a survey, on a normal working day not in contact with country people of another race.
The country feels unfairly treated – rightly
All this makes but for the murder of Terre Blanche’s not the start of a race war. Just recently we had to digest here that the attacks were calculated on the Togolese soccer ball team during the African Cup in Angola to South Africa’s own responsibility. And now the impending final battle between black and white.
The country feels unfairly treated, and not without reason. The security situation in the country is not easy – but the murder of Terre Blanche adds nothing. The AWB is a far-right splinter group confused, hardly more important than the ailing DVU in Germany. The vision of a white supremacy or a purely Afrikaner “nation state” is shared among the Boers hardly anyone. The days of AWB supporters coup concocted plans or jeeps stormed building, which was received in the apartheid government negotiations with the ANC are long gone.
Again, on Friday at the funeral Terre Blanche blow the swastika-like flags. Once again there will be pictures of Boers in khaki pants, shed the murder and whether the supposedly glorious apartheid tears. With a civil war but that has nothing to do. And with the upcoming soccer World Cup the way, even less.