JOHANNESBURG: A South African court sentenced a black farmhand to life in prison on Wednesday for the axe murder of Eugene Terre’blanche, a white supremacist prominent during the dying years of apartheid.
Chris Mahlangu killed Terre’blanche over a pay dispute in April 2011 at the white farmer’s home in Ventersdorp, about 125 km (80 miles) west of Johannesburg.
Judge John Horn said the attack was not racially motivated. Many South Africans see Terre’blanche as a relic from a bygone era and his murder did little to stir racial tension.
Terre’blanche, a burly man known for his thick white beard and fiery rhetoric, led the hardline supremacist Afrikaner Resistance Movement, known by its Afrikaans acronym AWB. Its members adopted military uniforms and flags with a symbol reminiscent of the Nazi swastika, and called for an all-white homeland in post-apartheid South Africa. A small group of his armed supporters attempted a coup in the black-run “homeland” of Bophuthatswana shortly before the first all-race elections in April 1994 but retreated after meeting resistance from security forces. (Reuters)