Tensions rise as court to hear case of blacks accused of killing SAfrican white supremacist

Tensions rise in SAfrican white supremacist case

VENTERSDORP, South Africa — A racially charged standoff outside a courthouse where a teenager and another black farm worker were charged with killing a leading white supremacist ended peacefully Tuesday — a victory for democracy in South Africa.

The older suspect was walked out of the courthouse hours later to a rapturous welcome from blacks outside who screamed, ululated and whistled their support.

“Hero! Hero! Hero!” they chanted.

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

The brutal bludgeoning of Eugene Terreblanche, 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.

In a musical duel outside the courthouse, whites and blacks sang competing national anthems from South Africa’s racist past and its new reality. Then the whites sang “The baboon climbs the mountain,” — a flagrant insult to blacks.

A violent confrontation easily could have erupted after a middle aged white woman sprayed an energy drink on blacks singing “God Bless Africa.”

Instead, police officers rushed to separate the two groups yelling at each other and the only apparent blow struck was thrown by a black police officer whose fist grazed the jaw of a white man.

Police set up coils of razor wire to separate the two groups — whites waving old flags signifying white rule in support of Terreblanche’s family and blacks supporting the family of the 15-year-old suspect and his 28-year-old co-worker.

Afterward, the militant whites apologized for the woman’s behavior.

Community leader Bomber Matinyane said the display of racist flags was angering people. He said whites should stop waving them and blacks should stop singing the inciting song with lyrics that include “kill the farmer.”

Blacks outside the courthouse sang other songs dating from the struggle for majority rule that finally came in 1994 after years of state-sponsored violence by the white minority regime and urban guerrilla warfare waged by the African National Congress.

Brenda Abrams, a 30-year-old black businesswoman outside the courthouse complained that a “big fuss” was being made about Terreblanche’s death.

“But nobody says anything when black farmworkers are killed by farmers,” Abrams said.

Authorities say Terreblanche, 69, was bludgeoned to death Saturday in his bed. The 15-year-old’s mother told AP Television News that the suspects killed the farmer because he hadn’t paid them since December. When they asked for their money, she said, he threatened to kill them.

Police have not identified the accused by name.

Inside the magistrate’s court, the case proceeded. Prosecutor George Baloyi said the suspects were formally charged with murder, housebreaking with intent to rob, attempted robbery with aggravating circumstances, and criminal injury.

“We will aver that after assaulting the deceased they pulled down his pants to his knees and exposed his private parts,” Baloyi told reporters.

Zola Majavu, the attorney defending the 15-year-old for no charge, said he knew nothing of any confession and that “my client remains innocent until the due process of law” concludes.

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

“The family are traumatized, 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.

Fears of violence had risen after Terreblanche’s Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging movement, better known as the AWB, threatened to avenge their leader’s death and members swaggered around town with pistols on hip holsters.

But spokesman Pieter Steyn retreated from those threats Monday, saying they had been made “in the heat of the moment” and that the movement renounces all violence. There were no pistols in evidence Tuesday.

Analyst Steven Friedman, director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, said the fears were overblown, especially since Terreblanche led such a small, fringe group of extremists.

“It’s quite clear that there are a lot of tensions, problems, but this kind of notion that South Africa is a powder keg waiting to ignite is clearly untrue,” Friedman said.

Associated Press Writer Nastasya Tay contributed to this report from Johannesburg.