Security tight for Terreblanche funeral

Men in camouflage with pistols at their waists and young girls in their Sunday best gathered in north-west South Africa today for the funeral of a white supremacist killed in what has been described as a wage dispute with two black farmworkers.

Security for the funeral of Eugene Terreblanche is tight, with a police helicopter circling over the church where a few hundred mourners gathered hours before the funeral begins.

Terreblanche’s death has not sparked wider violence. South African leaders have acknowledged that racial tensions remain 16 years after apartheid ended, but have played down any threat to the World Cup that starts in June.

White militants who considered Terreblanche their leader say his death proves whites are not safe under majority rule. Black leaders say controlling crime - whether its victims are white or black – is a priority in a country with one of the highest rates of violent crime in the world.

Some mourners today linked Terreblanche’s death to the fiery rhetoric of the youth leader of the governing African National Congress. In recent weeks, Julius Malema, leader of the ANC Youth League, has been reviving an anti-apartheid era song that refers to killing white farmers.

Kobus Rothmann, a Ventersdorp clergyman who described himself as a friend of Terreblanche, said Malema was spreading hate speech and should be reined in by more senior ANC leaders.

“They just hate us, Malema hates us,” Rothmann told reporters as he waited for the funeral service to begin.

Malema says the song has nothing to do with Terreblanche’s death. While the ANC insists the song is part of its heritage, following Terreblanche’s death it asked its members to refrain from performing anti-apartheid anthems that could be divisive.

On Thursday, Malema was accused of fanning already high tensions by hurling racially tinged insults at a white BBC reporter before ejecting the journalist from a news conference. That followed a television appearance on Wednesday by the new leader of Terreblanche’s white separatist group that ended with the leader, Andre Visagie, storming out of a live discussion about race relations. Visagie told a fellow guest, a black analyst: “I am not finished with you.”

For all the shouting, the aftermath of Terreblanche’s death has shown how far South Africa has come. White militants first vowed revenge, but later joined President Jacob Zuma in calling for calm.

Earlier this week, whites and blacks faced off angrily in front of a heavily guarded courthouse where a teenager and another young farm worker who allegedly confessed to killing Terreblanche were charged with murder in a closed hearing. But white leaders then asked their followers to go home, and the day ended calmly.

The country’s largest trade union called a meeting today to coincide with the funeral in the part of Ventersdorp where most of the town’s poor blacks live, ensuring there would be no racial confrontations.

Also among the mourners today was Bojosi Isaac Medupe, a black minister who said he visited Terreblanche in prison after the white leader was convicted of beating a black farm worker so badly the man was left brain-damaged.

Medupe said he believed Terreblanche mellowed in prison, and was no longer committed to racial separatism or white supremacy when he left.

“I believe there was a change in him,” Medupe said, adding Terreblanche later helped him buy land in Ventersdorp.

Mourners sang South Africa’s apartheid-era anthem as the funeral got underway.

Terreblanche’s body was brought into the church in a closed coffin covered in red and white flowers.

The coffin was also draped with the flag of the white supremacist movement he led. Two men wearing the group’s military-style uniform stood at each end of the coffin.

The 500 people in the church rose and sang Die Stem, an Afrikaans-language song that was the national anthem during the apartheid era. One verse of the song, which translates to “The Call,” is a verse in the modern, multi-lingual South African national anthem Nkosi Sikeleli Africa.

Hundreds more mourners gathered on the grass outside, listening to the service on speakers set up around the church.