South Africa: Death of Terre’Blanche
05.04.2010, 17:53 2010-04-05 17:53:00
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After the death of a feared right-wing South African racial unrest. Some are afraid of what may yet come. Who was Terre’Blanche?
It begins with a fight – and ends with murder. This happens again and again in South Africa, a country that has the trouble to curb violent crimes of violence. But not all murders, the nation attract so much as the recent murder near Ventersdorp. The crime of forcing President Jacob Zuma last week even to call its citizens to rest and calm. South Africa is shocked. And some are afraid of things to come yet.
Enlarge South African right-wing extremist Eugene Terre’Blanche: Murdered with beatings and machete (© Photo: Reuters)
The victim is Eugene Terre’Blanche. This name stands for everything the new democratic South Africa would like to leave behind. The bearded leader of an extreme right-wing movement in South Africa has been killed on his farm in the North West province. The police have arrested two suspects, a 21-year-old man and a 15-year-olds. The two blacks who worked for Terre’Blanche and apparently had fallen for alleged outstanding wage claims in dispute with him, it was said, according to initial investigations by the police. The 69-year-old was allegedly murdered in his bed with a machete and a stick.
But Terre’Blanche party doubts publicly that it was about money. Speculations about a political motive to make the rounds. The fear is growing that now could exacerbate tensions between whites and blacks at the Cape on. That would be dangerous to the cohesion of the young democracy.
In ten weeks, she invites the whole world for the World Cup to the Cape you will introduce yourself as a conciliatory and tolerant society, as a model for the whole continent. Now, if racial hatred should leave open again, this is a disturbing signal out into the world. This would be most threatening to the South African nation itself, where many conflicts fester unresolved – and try some politicians who abuse not yet worked up tensions of the apartheid policy. This is true not only for the white rights, but also – albeit in very different ways – for some currents within the ruling ANC.
Marginalized figure
Paradoxically, now the whole country are concerned about a man whose importance in South Africa last appeared at best marginal. The “Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB), which led Terre’Blanche is, at the very right edge, but very few white South Africans to follow her. But now the AWB is public again very present. The party called the murder of her boss a “declaration of war”. They want to bury him now “at peace”. But then the party will on 1 meet May and “decide what steps are being taken to avenge Terre’Blanche death,” AWB-General Andre Visagie said in South African media.
Who is the story of the militant Buren recalls will wipe such threats can not quite aside. Although prevail doubt that the AWB is currently capable of actions that go beyond single, isolated attacks. But could it be that the recent murder of ultra-right forces in South Africa mobilized again.
Presentation as the master race
Terre’Blanche had founded his movement 1973rd He braced himself against the former apartheid regime because it allegedly sold the interests of the ruling whites. For people like himself a Terre’Blanche Pieter Botha was too liberal, who defended stable as president of South Africa, racial segregation. The Boer movement became more militant, as it became clear that the apartheid regime was headed by the late President Willem de Klerk on reforms. Terre’Blanche staged yourself on horseback, blue-eyed, with a flowing beard. A persistent settlers, a master race that is a “white country” wanted to – whatever his name corresponds Huguenot.
In the fight against the first democratic elections in South Africa killed 21 people, the AWB. Terre’Blanche took it later in the truth commission in charge. But in 1996 he struck a guard almost dead and it was later imprisoned. Since his release in 2004, he led a rather secluded life on his farm near Ventersdorp. He almost seemed to be forgotten.
Julius Malema, the coming man of the ANC
But it is now not only is for the murder of Terre’Blanche. To understand the great excitement in South Africa, looks back must be the heated debate in recent weeks, which caught fire again and again to the dubious appearances of a young man: Julius Malema, leader of the youth league of the ruling African National Congress (ANC).
Malema, 29, is an ambitious young man who sees himself not only on the way to the top of his party but also like it if it already followers act as a future president. Malema could now count on President Zuma and his supporters. He loves fine designer clothing – and the coarse word. None polarized society of South Africa as much as Malema. He was particularly effective with it as he recently revived an old song from the liberation struggle, “Kill the Boer” it says. Malema loves the song, he sings it whenever he can and teaches so the white minority to fear.
This resulted in a heated argument developed until a court last week said Malema under the singing of the song. Already in 2003 the Human Rights Commission of South Africa had banned the song as inflammatory. The young officer Malema does not seem to disturb the contrary. He travels straight through the adjacent state crisis occurs in this case with Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe’s closest followers to praise the policies of the dominant Zanu-PF.
That’s troubling enough for those South Africans who fear that Mugabe’s violent land expropriation might eventually find imitators in the Cape. The land reform that should be taken forward in South Africa by peaceful means, makes little progress for years. Malema exercises not only to close ranks with Mugabe’s forces, he tops that one, and sings, one day after assassination Terre’Blanche, the controversial song in Zimbabwe again: “Kill the Boer”. At the same time he declared the murder of Terre’Blanche: “I have nothing to do with it.”
President Zuma, is expected by the leadership sends mixed signals, however: on the one hand, he has used the Easter Sunday for a special address on national television, the murder as “appalling act” and condemned the land to rest times. That was a quick, clear response, which will welcome many South Africans. On the other hand, Zuma had but in recent months, always taken care of frustration because the ANC leadership had been unable to face down his youth functionary Malema in his place. The court’s ruling against the controversial song wants to challenge the ANC. All this stirs fear among the white population, because it gains the impression that racist tirades Malemas covered by the ANC, if not entirely carried.
Some bring the murder of Terre’Blanche therefore now directly with Malema and the song name. It crosses the reading of the ANC, that the song was not to be taken literally and should be understood as a kind of historic heritage from the times of the struggle against apartheid.
Even President Zuma loves so many a song from the days of the liberation struggle, above all else: “. Bring me my machine gun” In the election campaign for the presidency could be missing the song with hardly any of its appearance.