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TechnoratiTwo charged with murder of SAfrican white supremacist
Two South Africans, a man and a 15-year-old boy, were charged with the murder of white supremacist Eugene Terre'Blanche Tuesday. Police had to put up a barbed wire fence to separate a crowd of Terre'blanche's followers from a group of black protesters outside the courtroom. Racial tensions have been high ahead of the court appearance of the two suspects.
Correspondent Jean-Jacques Cornish said about 300 members of Terre’Blanche’s Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB) showed up early Tuesday morning outside the court in Ventersdorp, west of Johannesburg.
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“They carried the old war flag of the old Transvaal republic, with its swastika-like symbol,” he said. “Opposing them were a group of young black people, chanting and singing… And there were verbal exchanges between whites and blacks- some arguments, some heated.”
After a few scuffles between the groups, police strung razor wire to separate them.
"They have been charged," state prosecutor George Baloi told journalists outside the court in Ventersdorp, west of Johannesburg.
The pair face four charges, one of murder, two of robbery and attempted robbery, and one of injuring Terre'Blanche's dignity.
“[One charge] was crimen injuria, which involved pulling down the pants on Terre’blanche’s dead body, and exposing his genitalia,” said Cornish. “The prosecution has asked whether this might be a hate crime, and they said that this would come out in the case.”
The two suspects reportedly argued with Terre’Blanche over unpaid wages for work on his farm near Ventersdorp, where he was found bludgeoned to death Saturday.
One of the accused is in his late 20s, while the other is a 15-year-old boy, the first adolescent charged under South Africa’s juvenile law.
Prosecutor Baloi said there will have to be a determination of whether the boy was capable of committing murder or whether he acted on someone’s instructions.
The boy has not been identified, but his attorney, Zola Majavu, says he is distraught.
“With regards to my client: he’s in bad shape,” Majavu said, adding that the boy had not eaten. “I had to get him some Red Bull, just to get his sugar levels up.”
According to the attorney, the boy is not ready to stand trial.
“He is no position to conduct a proper interview with anybody, and that is precisely why, amongst other reasons, the case has to be postponed,” said Majavu
The investigation has been postponed until 14 April when the defence will apply to have their clients released on bail.
Comments (1)
Swastika-like symbol
The old Transvaal war flag was created before the turn of the 20th century and contained no such thing. For one, it wasn't a war flag, but a national flag, called the "four-color", consisting of red, white and blue, with a vertical green band on the left.
The swastika-like flag was an ill-advised invention of the AWB during the seventies and does not in the least reflect the national aspirations of Afrikaners/Boers descended from citizens of the old Transvaal and Free State Boer Republics.
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