Monday, April 5, 2010

SOUTH AFRICA KILLING SPARKS RACIAL TENSION


South African white supremacist Eugene Terre'Blanche is shown on June 11, 2004 after his release from prison in Potchefstroom. The far-right leader, who campaigned for a separate white homeland, was murdered on Saturday.
Ventersdorp, South Africa: Laying flowers and draping a separatist flag, far-right supporters of white supremacist leader Eugene Terre'Blanche flocked yesterday to the farm where he was hacked to death.
  • Some of his Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB or Afrikaner Resistance Movement) followers, filled with grief and anger, exchanged heated words with police while trying to enter the farm where he was murdered on Saturday, heightening racial tensions.
  • Andre Visagie of the AWB movement said the group would urge teams to avoid the upcoming World Cup football tournament in South Africa out of safety concerns. He said it would avenge Terre'Blanche's death, but didn't give details.
  • "The death of Mr Terre'Blanche is a declaration of war by the black community of South Africa to the white community that has been killed for ten years on end," Visagie said.
  • In the quiet streets of Terre'Blanche's stronghold Ventersdorp on Easter Sunday, ugly white-black incidents were being played out.
  • "A black guy killed a white guy. Obviously it's going to stir a lot of trouble," Kgomotso Kgamanyane, 20, a cashier at local petrol station said. "Just earlier a customer came in, a white guy, and he told us to go to hell.
  • "So it's something that's going to stir a lot of trouble between blacks and whites. It could get violent, because whites in their minds they think that we did it because of hate."
  • Despite a display of gun holsters and the AWB's paramilitary history, Steyn claimed the movement was against violence.
  • Several AWB supporters had to check in their firearms at a press conference held by the minister of police yesterday, with one elderly man kissing his reclaimed revolver as he exited the meeting.
  • The organisation, which uses a swastika-like emblem, believes that the killing is linked to a controversial song urging people to "kill the boer" sung by ruling ANC party youth leader Julius Malema.
  • Related Story :Son helped kill SAfrican white supremacist
Source: AFP

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