'My son killed Terre'Blanche'
2010-04-05 14:00
Ventersdorp - The mother of a 15-year-old murder suspect told Associated Press Television News on Monday that her son says he struck AWB leader Eugene Terre'Blanche with an iron rod after the farmer refused to pay him.
"My son admitted that they did the killing," the mother said in an exclusive interview conducted in Tswana from her two-room cement home in Tshing township, on the outskirts of Ventersdorp.
She said she spoke to the teenager at the Ventersdorp police station on Saturday after he turned himself in along with his alleged accomplice, also a farm worker.
Police have refused to identify either of the suspects by name. By law, a minor accused of any charge cannot be identified without permission from a judge.
The AWB planned to march on Monday to the police station to demand the police bring out the two suspects.
'My son doesn't like to be in trouble'
Police say the two have been charged with murder and will appear in court on Tuesday.
The mother said her son told her that when he and his co-worker asked Terre'Blanche for their money, he told them first to bring in the cows. After they had brought in the cows they again asked for their money, which he then refused to give them.
"He said that the man (farm worker) told him to wait while he went to the storeroom. He came back with an iron rod. He started hitting Terre'Blanche, with four blows to the head. Then my son says he took the iron rod and hit him with three blows," the mother said.
She appeared a bit bewildered and scared. "My son was a person who doesn't like to be in trouble," she said softly.
At the farm on Monday, a big grader was being used to dig a hole for Terre'Blanche in the family graveyard, where he is to be buried after a church service in Ventersdorp on Friday.
'We are not racists'
"This was such an unnecessary thing," Terre'Blanche's brother, Andries, told the AP, as he sat on a grey marble grave. "We are not racists, we just believe in purity of race."
AWB leaders have been using Terre'Blanche's killing as a rallying point for their cause, with secretary-general Andre Visagie claiming on Sunday that Terre'Blanche's brutal death was "a declaration of war" by blacks against whites.
He also warned countries against sending their soccer teams without protection to "a land of murder".
Visagie said the teenager was a casual worker and that the older man was a full-time employee of Terre'Blanche, who had been taking care of the garden of the family home in Ventersdorp.
Police said Terre'Blanche was lying on his bed in the farmhouse outside the town when he was attacked, between 17:00 and 18:00 on Saturday.
Visagie and other members of the group have blamed African National Congress Youth leader Julius Malema, saying he spread hate speech that led to Terre'Blanche's killing.
'Not hate speech'
Malema incited controversy last month when he led college students in a song that included the lyrics "shoot the boer".
The song sparked a legal battle in which the ANC challenged a High Court that ruled the lyrics as unconstitutional.
The ANC insists the song is a valuable part of its cultural heritage and that the lyrics - which also refer to the farmers as thieves and rapists - are not intended literally and are therefore not hate speech.
Terre'Blanche, a bearded, charismatic 69-year-old, co-founded and led the AWB. Its red, white and black insignia resembles a Nazi swastika, but with three prongs instead of four.
Terre'Blanche emerged in the 1970s and threatened to take the country by force if white rule ended. He was known to arrive at meetings on horseback flanked by masked bodyguards dressed in khaki or black.
After serving six years in prison for attacking two black workers, he re-emerged in 2004 with renewed vigour for his cause.
He lived in relative obscurity in recent years on his farm outside Ventersdorp, about 110km northwest of Johannesburg.
Visagie said that was where Terre'Blanche had been spending most of his time since he had heart surgery a few weeks ago.
- SAPA