Eugène Ney Terre'Blanche (, 31 January 1941Terre'Blanche's year of birth is alternately given as 1941 or 1944. The majority of sources indicates 1941; sources that claim 1944 as his year of birth include The Star, The Nelson Mandela Foundation and the website of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging – 3 April 2010) was a South African Afrikaner nationalist and white supremacist who founded and led the neo-Nazi (AWB; ). Prior to founding the AWB, he served as a South African Police officer, was a farmer, and was a Herstigte Nasionale Party ('Reconstituted National Party') candidate for local office in the Transvaal.
He was a major figure in the right-wing backlash against the collapse of apartheid in the early 1990s. His beliefs and philosophy have continued to be influential amongst white supremacists and white nationalists in South Africa and across the world. He was killed on 3 April 2010 at aged 69.
Background Terre'Blanche's grandfather fought as a Cape Rebel for the Boer cause in the Second Boer War, while his father was a lieutenant colonel in the South African Defence Force and a leader of the local Commando.
The progenitor of the Terre'Blanche name (translatable as either 'white land' or 'white earth' in French) in the region was a French Huguenot refugee, Estienne Terre'Blanche from Toulon (Provence), who arrived at the Cape in 1704, fleeing anti-Protestant persecution in France. The Terre'Blanche name has generally retained its original spelling though other spellings include Terre Blanche, Terblanche and Terblans.
Born on a farm in the Transvaal town of Ventersdorp on 31 January 1941, Terre'Blanche attended Laerskool Ventersdorp and Hoër Volkskool in Potchefstroom, matriculating in 1962. He had many interactions with black people while growing up and spoke fluent Setswana. While in school, he gave early expression to his political leanings by founding the cultural organisation Jong Afrikanerharte (Young Afrikaner Hearts).Russell, Alec, Big men, little people: the leaders who defined Africa. Macmillan, 1999.
He joined the South African Police, and was initially deployed in South West Africa (now Namibia), which had been given to South Africa under a League of Nations Trust mandate after World War I. Upon returning to South Africa, he became a Warrant Officer in the Special Guard Unit, which was assigned to members of the Cabinet.
Under Terre'Blanche, the AWB swore to use violence to preserve minority rule, opposing any concessions offered to the African National Congress – an organisation AWB supporters repeatedly branded as Marxist terrorists – and gaining notoriety for storming the Kempton Park Trade Centre during bilateral negotiations in 1993. AWB loyalists also clashed with South African security forces at the Battle of Ventersdorp, a bloody skirmish in 1991 where police opened fire on a white crowd for the first time since the Rand Rebellion, leaving three AWB members dead. Immediately prior to South Africa's first non-racial election, Terre'Blanche's followers were linked to a number of bombings and assassinations targeting the South African Communist Party; armed AWB commandos participated in the crisis in Bophuthatswana in 1994.
Terre'Blanche spent three years in a Rooigrond prison for assaulting a petrol station attendant and for the attempted murder of a black security guard around 1996. He was released in June 2004. On 3 April 2010, he was murdered on his Ventersdorp farm by two of his employees after an altercation over unpaid wages. His only remaining family member is his grandson, Grant Terre'Blanche, who recently was involved in female abuse lawsuits.
Political career
Herstigte Nasionale Party During the late 1960s, Terre'Blanche increasingly opposed what he called the "liberal policies" of B. J. Vorster, then Prime Minister of South Africa. After four years of service in the South African Police, he resigned to pursue a career in politics, running unsuccessfully for local office in Heidelberg as a member of the far-right Herstigte Nasionale Party. Eugene Terre'Blanche (1941–2010) . Retrieved 4 April 2010.
Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging Disillusioned with the established avenues for political participation, Terre'Blanche founded the (AWB) in Heidelberg with six other individuals in 1973. Initially a secret society, the AWB first appeared on the public scene after its members were charged and fined in connection with the tarring and feathering of Floors van Jaarsveld, a professor of history who had publicly voiced the opinion that the Day of the Vow, a religious public holiday in remembrance of the Battle of Blood River, was nothing more than a secular event with hardly any real reference point in history. Although Terre'Blanche would later express his regrets regarding the incident when testifying before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he suggested that his convictions relating to the sanctity of the Day of the Vow might make his actions more understandable. In the years that followed, Terre'Blanche's speeches at public gatherings often evoked the Battle of Blood River, and his oratorical skills earned him much support among the white right wing in South Africa; the AWB claimed 70,000 members at its height. In September 1977, Johannesburg newspaper The World reported that Terre'Blanche had been investigated on charges of bestiality involving a number of African bushpigs.
Throughout the 1980s, Terre'Blanche continued to present himself and the AWB as an alternative to both the National Party-led government and the Conservative Party, and he remained staunchly opposed to the reform policies of P. W. Botha to establish additional, albeit still separate, parliamentary chambers for non-whites, and to grant suffrage to Coloureds and South Africans of Indian origin."Obituary: Eugene Terreblanche", BBC News. Retrieved 4 April 2010. The organisation's strongest support was found in the rural communities of South Africa's North, with comparably few supporters in urban areas where his following was largely limited to middle and lower-income Afrikaners.
End of apartheid
Terre'Blanche viewed the end of apartheid as a surrender to communism, and threatened full-scale civil war if President F. W. de Klerk handed power to Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress."Eugene Terre'Blanche" (Obituary), Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 4 April 2010. When De Klerk addressed a meeting in Terre'Blanche's hometown of Ventersdorp in 1991, Terre'Blanche led a protest, and the Battle of Ventersdorp ensued between the AWB and the police, with a number of people killed. Terre'Blanche claimed that it was only when he stood between the police and the AWB and demanded a ceasefire that the shooting ended. Terre'Blanche accused President de Klerk of instigating the riot for political gain.
In an attempt to disrupt the negotiation process in 1993, Terre'Blanche led an armed invasion of the World Trade Centre in Kempton Park while negotiations to end apartheid were in progress. After a memorandum of grievances was presented to National Party minister Roelf Meyer and Dawie de Villiers and after an agreement that no arrests would be made, the AWB withdrew from the premises. That evening several identified AWB leaders were arrested and their wives were incarcerated in Soweto, separately from their husbands. Vlakplaas General Krappies Engelbrecht was appointed to launch an investigation.
Terre'Blanche claimed he and President Lucas Mangope of the predominantly ethnic Tswana Homeland of Bophuthatswana came to a "mutual agreement" on 17 February 1992 to aid each other in the "event of a communist threat". On 4 March 1994 Mangope announced that Bophutatswana would not participate in the South African general election in an effort to maintain Bophutatswana's independence from the Republic of South Africa. Bophuthatswana's minister of justice, Godfrey Mothibe tried in vain to convince Mangope to participate in the election, but then accused the ANC of orchestrating the revolt, which was helped by the stance taken by South Africa's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Pik Botha. Thousands of ANC supporters were bussed in from outside Bophuthatswana to support the popular uprising. Terre'Blanche claimed a conspiracy by citing a "three-step plan" by the ANC in an effort to destabilise Bophuthatswana, which included ANC infiltration of the Bophuthatswana police and military. However, ANC candidate for the North West Province, Popo Molefe claimed the ANC was merely supporting the people of Bophuthatswana after it became clear that their political freedoms were limited.
The AWB were subsequently defeated while invading Bophuthatswana to prop up the autocratic leader of the Bantustan in 1994 and Terre'Blanche did not follow up on his earlier threats of war.
Terre'Blanche claimed he had personally communicated with Mangope on 10 March 1994, prior to mobilising his men to protect the capital Mmabatho against looting and unrest. Officers of the Bophuthatswana Defence Force initially received the AWB militia with "great joy and surprise". (Vuur en Verraad, Arthur Kemp) The AWB militia assembled in an airport hangar in Mmabatho, where they were to be provided with rations and firearms. Terre'Blanche ordered his men to remove their AWB badges upon the request of the Bophuthatswana Defence Force. While contained at the hangar, an unidentified and independent faction carrying the AWB emblems started shooting indiscriminately at the public. Terre'Blanche concluded that the South African intelligence services may have set up the shooting in order to discredit the AWB, since the media broadcast footage of the individuals' emblems, but did not publicise their identity. The Bophuthatswana police systematically began to remove the media from strategic locations, and the initial hospitality shown to the AWB militia was replaced by contempt. When Bophuthatswana fell into complete anarchy, the AWB withdrew.
1991 documentary and libel case Terre'Blanche was the subject of the television documentary The Leader, His Driver and the Driver's Wife (1991), directed by British filmmaker Nick Broomfield. Broomfield's documentary claimed Terre'Blanche had an affair with Jani Allan, the journalist who had interviewed him for South Africa's Sunday Times, an assertion she disputed as well as her portrayal in the documentary. This provoked a scandal in the AWB. In July 1989, Cornelius Lottering, a member of the breakaway Orde van die Dood group, orchestrated a failed assassination attempt on Allan's life by placing a bomb outside her Sandton apartment.
This led to Allan taking libel proceedings against the documentary broadcaster Channel 4 in 1992 in the London's High Court. During the court hearings, several transcripts of their alleged sexual relationship appeared in the South African and British press. Terre'Blanche submitted a sworn statementAllan, Jani, "A Ham That Can't Be Cured", The Spectator. 21 August 1992. to the London court denying he had had an affair with Allan. In a rare interview with the Afrikaans Sunday newspaper Die Rapport, his wife Martie Terre'Blanche denounced the rumours. Although the judge found that Channel 4's allegations had not defamed Allan, he did not rule on whether or not there had been an affair. The South African business newspaper Financial Mail published a lead story on 6 August detailing the theory that F.W. de Klerk had orchestrated the libel case to discredit Terre'Blanche and the far right movement in South Africa. Allan continued to dismiss the claims.
Amnesty Following the end of apartheid, Terre'Blanche and his supporters sought amnesty for the storming of the World Trade Centre, the 'Battle of Ventersdorp', and other acts. Amnesty was granted by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Later years