Racial unrest as two charged with murder

WHITES and blacks faced off angrily in song in front of a heavily guarded courthouse yesterday where a teenager and another farm worker who reportedly confessed to killing a white supremacist leader in a wage dispute were charged with murder.

The older of the two suspects was led out hours later and driven away in a police vehicle. By then, white protesters had gone, leaving hundreds of blacks who screamed, ululated and whistled in support.

“We are celebrating the death of the man who has abused us so much,” one woman shouted.

The killing of Eugene Terreblanche, a pro- apartheid militant leader once convicted of beating a black farm worker so badly the man was left brain damaged, has focused attention on simmering racial tensions less than 10 weeks before South Africa hosts the World Cup.

Earlier yesterday, police officers rushed to separate nearly 2,000 people split into white and black groups after a middle-aged white woman sprayed an energy drink on blacks singing the Zulu choruses of the national anthem. Whites had sung the parts of the national anthem that are in Afrikaans and that date to the apartheid era.

Police set up coils of razor wire to separate the groups – whites who said they were there to support Terreblanche’s family and blacks supporting the family of the 15-year-old suspect and his 28-year-old co-worker.

Authorities say Terreblanche, 69, was bludgeoned to death last Saturday in his bed. The 15- year-old’s mother told AP that the suspects killed the farmer because he hadn’t paid them since December. Police have not identified the suspects by name.

Prosecutor George Baloyi said the suspects were formally charged yesterday with murder, housebreaking with intent to rob, attempted robbery with aggravating circumstances, and crimen injuria, a charge in South Africa that often refers to racial insult.

Zola Majavu, defence attorney for the 15-year- old suspect, is representing the boy free of charge. “My client remains innocent until the due process of law is successfully concluded,” Majavu said.

Majavu said his client is overwhelmed and fearful for the safety of his family.

“The family are traumatised, scared,” Majavu said. “The mother is sitting in court right now because she is afraid to go home.”

A new hearing was set for April 14. Baloyi said investigations until then would include trying to establish whether the suspects were capable of standing trial.

Terreblanche’s AWB (Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging), a far right resistance movement, has blamed African National Congress Youth League leader Julius Malema for the death, saying his insistence on public performances of an anti- apartheid song that includes lines about killing white farmers was hate speech that led to Terreblanche’s killing.

Malema says the song has nothing to do with Terreblanche’s death. The ANC insists the lyrics, which also speak of white farmers as thieves and rapists, refer to those who supported apartheid and now oppose democracy.