Crowds face off outside Terreblanche murder court

Angry whites and blacks faced each other today in front of the heavily guarded South African court where the first hearing of the alleged killers of Eugene Terreblanche was due to take place.

The death of Terreblanche, a 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.

Police rushed to separate nearly 2,000 people split into white and black groups after a middle-aged white woman sprayed an energy drink on black protesters singing the Zulu choruses of the country’s national anthem.

White protesters had earlier been singing 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 two suspects, a 15-year-old and a 28-year-who worked on the Terreblanche farm.

Terreblanche, 69, was bludgeoned to death on Saturday in his bed. The 15-year-old’s mother said her son and the other man killed him because he had not paid them in months.

Today’s court hearing in the town of Ventersdorp was not public because the younger suspect is a minor. Police have not identified either of the suspects by name.

Outside after calm was restored, Pieter Steyn, the provincial leader of Terreblanche’s Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging movement, better known as the AWB, apologised for the woman who sprayed the black protesters.

A day earlier, Steyn had retreated from threats made by other militants to avenge Terreblanche’s death.

The AWB 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.

The ANC insists the song is part of its heritage and that the lyrics – which also speak of white farmers as thieves and rapists – refer to those who supported apartheid and now oppose democracy.

The older of the two suspects was walked out of the court hours later, put into a police vehicle and driven away. By then, white protesters had left, leaving only hundreds of black protesters who shouted and whistled in support.

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