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Concept
Eugène Terre'Blanche
Summary
Eugène Ney Terre'Blanche (ɪə̯ˈʒɛn ˈnɛj tərˈblɑ̃ːʃ, 31 January 1941 – 3 April 2010) was an Afrikaner nationalist who founded and led the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB; Afrikaner Resistance Movement in English). Prior to founding the AWB, Terre'Blanche served as a South African Police officer, was a farmer, and was an unsuccessful 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. His beliefs and philosophy have continued to be influential amongst white supremacists in South Africa and across the world.
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 Afrikaners dead. Immediately prior to South Africa's first multiracial 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 hacked and beaten to death on his Ventersdorp farm, by two of his black employees.
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.
Official source
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