RIP Eugene Terreblanche

Eugene Terreblanche, leader of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement - AWB) has been hacked to death while sleeping by black workers on his farm in north-western South Africa.

The AWB was founded in 1970 by Mr Terreblanche and 6 colleagues.

His movement increased from 7 founder members to 70 000 out of a White population of 3,5 million.

During public gatherings he drew bigger audiences than any other White leaders locally.

In the mid-1980s, the AWB instituted a Voedingskema (feeding program), later called the Volkshulpskema (people's help scheme), to help the very poorest Afrikaner families. The scheme delivered a meal every day to 14,000 poor Afrikaner children in Pretoria. Certain farmers also donated vegetables on an almost weekly basis, and in the final three months of 1986 alone 300 tons of food was donated. In the winter, bedding was donated as well. Sympathetic mine owners and farmers arranged jobs for unemployed Afrikaners on the farms and mines.

During the negotiations that led to South Africa's first multiracial elections, the AWB threatened all-out war. During the Battle of Ventersdorp in August 1991, the AWB confronted police in front of the town hall where President F W de Klerk was speaking, and "a number of people were killed or injured" in the conflict. Later in the negotiations, the AWB stormed the Kempton Park World Trade Centre where the negotiations were taking place, breaking through the glass front of the building with an armoured car. The police guarding the centre failed to prevent the invasion. The AWB then took over the main conference hall.

Mr Terreblanche's murder by black thugs is indicative of the type of place South Africa has become in recent times. More than 3,000 white farmers have been murdered since the end of apartheid in 1994.

RIP Eugene Terreblanche.