Mourners discuss their fears
2010-04-09 10:30
Ventersdorp - Mourners waiting to get into the funeral of AWB leader Eugene Terre'Blanche in Ventersdorp on Friday held an impromptu group meeting outside the church to discuss their fears that Afrikaners are being targeted for murder.
"That black group from Julius, it doesn't matter to them who you are, if your skin is white, they are going to kill you," shouted one woman from the crowd of around 200 people waiting for church doors to open.
"He is a monkey auntie, he belongs in the bush," shouted a young boy, referring to ANC Youth League president Julius Malema.
Malema had infuriated many farmers and Afrikaners with his singing of the lyrics "shoot the boer", which they believed was an incitement to kill them.
Threatened
With many policemen looking on, and television satellite relay vans rumbling in the background, another mourner Adriaan Groenewald said: "I feel threatened as I stand here. Everywhere around us, there is a black crowd just waiting for us to do something.
"The government is black, the police are black, the army is black."
Looking at the group of around 200 people, Groenewald was disturbed that out of "four million Afrikaners", there were so few present at the funeral of Terre'Blanche, who was murdered on Easter Saturday.
"Where are they going to run to if the shit hits the fan?" he asked.
Dominee Andre Erasmus, from the Evangelical Reformed Church in Klerksdorp, who also delivers sermons in Ventersdorp, spoke nostalgically about "Oom Terre'Blanche".
He related an anecdote of how he and another preacher once sat with Terre'Blanche in his car at night and watched him sob over the future of his "volk".
"What people didn't know about Oom Terre'Blanche was that he was a man with a heart," said Erasmus.
Murder 'political'
He believed the murder of Terre'Blanche was not about a pay dispute, as initially suspected, but was political.
He believed that about 10 years ago, "a war was declared on the white man in the country and nobody has done anything about it".
"We are standing in front of a new Blood River", he said of a historic battle between Voortrekkers and Zulus.
To the refrain of South Africa's apartheid-era anthem "Die Stem", more people filed past the armoured police vehicle parked outside the modern facebrick church, many carrying camping chairs so that they could hear the service from the loudspeakers erected outside the building.
The funeral was expected to begin at noon.
A 15-year-old boy and a 28-year-old man were in custody for the murder.
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