The not-so-tragic assassination of Eugene Terre'Blanche: A presentation

Résumé du document

As all of you know, post-apartheid South Africa is sometimes referred to as the Rainbow Nation. This term was coined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu to emphasize the start of a new era of harmonious multiculturalism and the coming together of people of many different nations, in a country once identified with the strict division of Blacks and Whites. It is widely believed that through the implementation of a transitional justice process, led by the much-vaunted Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and following the precepts of the Ubuntu (which is an African concept stressing the importance of human community), South Africa has reached a post-racial moment. Due to a global climate of forgiveness and understanding, a post-apartheid consensus was established, former antagonisms were buried and everyone to leave peacefully together.

But as you may have heard the murder, on the third of April, of Eugene Terre'Blanche, a white supremacist and founder of the far right party Afrikaner Resistance Movement, has sparked fears of renewed racial violence in South Africa , and has called the post-apartheid consensus into question.

I will first present the life of Eugene Terre'Blanche as well as the circumstances of his assassination before I move on to the consequences of this event, which could be huge for South Africa.

Extraits

[...] He also planned to unite the right wing forces of south Africa in order to take the fight of the free Boer to the International Court of Justice. The unsavoury Eugene Terre'Blanche was beaten and hacked to death in his sleep on the third of April, allegedly by two disgruntled black employees aged 28 and 15. Despite his outspoken racism the motives were apparently personal: an affair of unpaid wages and less than agreeable management style according to the economist, but allegations that Terre'Blanche had sexually assaulted one or both of its employees also emerged. [...]

[...] He openly threatened President de Klerk of launching a full scale civil war if he handed power to Nelson Mandela and the ANC. In 1991, as de klerk addressed a meeting in Terre'Blanche's hometown, the latter led a protest that resulted in a confrontation between the police forces and the followers of the Afrikaner Resistance Movement. In 1993 members of Terre'blanche movement crashed an armoured car through the glass façade of a building near Johannesburg where the government was now openly negotiating with the ANC, and invaded the premises, they were only able to shortly delay the negotiations. [...]

[...] But Eugene Terre'Blanche's bid was unsuccessful. In the aftermath of this personal disillusion he founded his own political party the Afrikaner Resistance Movement in 1973, still in Heidelberg. The party's ideology is of neo-fascist or neo-nazi aspiration, it is commited to the creation of an independent Boer-Afrikaner republic, and it's emblem is a not so subtle variation of the nazi's swastika. His party started as a secret society, which first apparition on the public scene occurred when its members were charged and fined for tarring and feathering an history professor who had criticized the official historical reinterpretation of the Zulu-Boer war. [...]

[...] The not-so-tragic assassination of Eugene Terre'Blanche: A presentation As all of you know post-apartheid South Africa is sometimes referred to as the Rainbow Nation. This term was coined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu to emphasize the start of a new era of harmonious multiculturalism and the coming-together of people of many different nations, in a country once identified with the strict division of black and white. It is widely believed that through the implementation of a transitional justice process, led by the much-vaunted Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and following the precepts of the Ubuntu (which is an African concept stressing the importance of human community), South Africa has reached a post-racial moment. [...]

[...] But those desperate and insane actions were a long way from preventing millions of blacks from turning out to vote. And even though he led violent actions he was not taken seriously, he weakened is cause by making it look like ridicule, he was most often than not mocked by punning headlines in the newspapers, and as the economist puts it: had he been less of a buffoon South Africa's way to democracy might have been bloodier. Following the end of apartheid Eugene Terre'Blanche and the vast majority of the members of the Afrikaner Resistance Movement involved in the fight against the end of the apartheid sought amnesty for his crimes, which was finally granted by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. [...]