Tight security as Terre’Blanche laid to rest
Armed police in bullet-proof jackets and members of Terre’Blanche’s Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB) stood watch inside and outside the church during the service amid concerns that emotions could boil over into racial clashes.
“He was a good person, the world was against him, they looked for the bad things about him,” Reverend Ferdie Devenir said of the fiery AWB leader who was hacked and bludgeoned to death on his farm near Ventersdorp on April 6.
Two black workers have been charged with the murder, allegedly sparked by a pay dispute.
About 1,000 mainly Afrikaner mourners packed the church and a loudspeaker broadcast the service to followers outside, many of them in paramilitary gear, who could not fit into the building.
A police helicopter hovered over the service in a rural backwater some 10km from the farm where Terre’Blanche was killed. His body was to be buried on the farm.
As Terre’Blanche’s family and friends attended the funeral service, black farm workers held their own meeting called by trade unionists to ensure workers and local communities “remain disciplined”.
The killing laid bare bitter racial divisions 16 years after the end of white minority rule under apartheid, with the AWB initially warning of revenge and tensions flaring outside the court that charged the suspects.
The government has called for calm while the Terre’Blanche family appealed for a quiet ceremony with no political activities.
National police chief Bheki Cele visited the AWB headquarters ahead of the funeral and told reporters afterwards: “We agreed we hope the day will be fine. We know it’s a very emotional day so we take that one on board.”
But the AWB, whose black device on a red and white flag resembles a Nazi swastika, has seized on the episode to highlight grievances over crime and repeat its calls for a separate white homeland, for which Terre’Blanche had campaigned.
A senior AWB member told journalists that the movement would meet South Africa’s police minister next week and “ask the government to give us our own homeland”.
“We want to be free. We are not interested in being a part of this failure of South Africa,” said Andre Visagie. “Our very, very last resort would be violence, but we hope that we can go without it.”
The AWB and other opposition parties have also linked Terre’Blanche’s death to a song known as Shoot the Boer, first used by the now-ruling African National Congress (ANC) during the anti-apartheid struggle.
Yesterday, Visagie called on AWB members to use violence to defend themselves against crime and called on international teams due for the football World Cup that starts on June 11 to protect themselves in South Africa.
“We encourage them to kill those attackers and they must go for it. Because we’ve had enough of the senseless killing of white people by black people in South Africa,” he said.
