Eugène Terre'Blanche

The progenitor of the Terre'Blanche name (translatable as either 'white land' or 'white earth' in French) in the region was a French Huguenot refugee, Estienne Terre'Blanche from Toulon (Provence), who arrived at the Cape in 1704, fleeing anti-Protestant persecution in France.

The Terre'Blanche name has generally retained its original spelling though other spellings include Terre'Blanche, Terre Blanche, Terblanche and Terblans.

Eugène Ney Terre'Blanche (, 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, he 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.

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.

Born on a farm in the Transvaal town of Ventersdorp on 31 January 1941, Terre'Blanche attended Laerskool Ventersdorp and Hoër Volkskool in Potchefstroom, matriculating in 1962.

While in school, he gave early expression to his political leanings by founding the cultural organisation Jong Afrikanerharte (Young Afrikaner Hearts).

He joined the South African Police, and was initially deployed in South West Africa (now Namibia), which had been given to South Africa under a League of Nations Trust mandate after World War I.

Upon returning to South Africa, he became a Warrant Officer in the Special Guard Unit, which was assigned to members of the Cabinet.

During the late 1960s, Terre'Blanche increasingly opposed what he called the "liberal policies" of B. J. Vorster, then Prime Minister of South Africa.

After four years of service in the South African Police, he resigned to pursue a career in politics, running unsuccessfully for local office in Heidelberg as a member of the far-right Herstigte Nasionale Party.

Disillusioned with the established avenues for political participation, Terre'Blanche founded the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) in Heidelberg with six other individuals in 1973.

Initially a secret society, the AWB first appeared on the public scene after its members were charged and fined in connection with the tarring and feathering of Floors van Jaarsveld, a professor of history who had publicly voiced the opinion that the Day of the Vow, a religious public holiday in remembrance of the Battle of Blood River, was nothing more than a secular event with hardly any real reference point in history.

Although Terre'Blanche would later express his regrets regarding the incident when testifying before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he suggested that his convictions relating to the sanctity of the Day of the Vow might make his actions more understandable.

In the years that followed, Terre'Blanche's speeches at public gatherings often evoked the Battle of Blood River, and his oratorical skills earned him much support among the white right wing in South Africa; the AWB claimed 70,000 members at its height.

In September 1977, Johannesburg newspaper The World reported that Terre'Blanche had been investigated on charges of bestiality involving a number of African bushpigs.

Throughout the 1980s, Terre'Blanche continued to present himself and the AWB as an alternative to both the National Party-led government and the Conservative Party, and he remained staunchly opposed to the reform policies of P. W. Botha to establish additional, albeit still separate, parliamentary chambers for non-whites, and to grant suffrage to Coloureds and South Africans of Indian origin.

The organisation's strongest support was found in the rural communities of South Africa's North, with comparably few supporters in urban areas where his following was largely limited to middle and lower-income Afrikaners.

Terre'Blanche viewed the end of apartheid as a surrender to communism, and threatened full-scale civil war if President F. W. de Klerk handed power to Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress.

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 AWB members dead.

When De Klerk addressed a meeting in Terre'Blanche's hometown of Ventersdorp in 1991, Terre'Blanche led a protest, and the Battle of Ventersdorp ensued between the AWB and the police, with a number of people killed.

Terre'Blanche claimed that it was only when he stood between the police and the AWB and demanded a ceasefire that the shooting ended.

Terre'Blanche accused President de Klerk of instigating the riot for political gain.

Terre'Blanche claimed he and President Lucas Mangope of the predominantly ethnic Tswana Homeland of Bophuthatswana came to a "mutual agreement" on 17 February 1992 to aid each other in the "event of a communist threat".

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.

In an attempt to disrupt the negotiation process in 1993, Terre'Blanche led an armed invasion of the World Trade Centre in Kempton Park while negotiations to end apartheid were in progress.

After a memorandum of grievances was presented to National Party minister Roelf Meyer and Dawie de Villiers and after an agreement that no arrests would be made, the AWB withdrew from the premises.

That evening several identified AWB leaders were arrested and their wives were incarcerated in Soweto, separately from their husbands.

Vlakplaas General Krappies Engelbrecht was appointed to launch an investigation.

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.

On 4 March 1994 Mangope announced that Bophutatswana would not participate in the South African general election in an effort to maintain Bophutatswana's independence from the Republic of South Africa.

Bophuthatswana's minister of justice, Godfrey Mothibe tried in vain to convince Mangope to participate in the election, but then accused the ANC of orchestrating the revolt, which was helped by the stance taken by South Africa's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Pik Botha.

Thousands of ANC supporters were bussed in from outside Bophuthatswana to support the popular uprising.

Terre'Blanche claimed a conspiracy by citing a "three-step plan" by the ANC in an effort to destabilise Bophuthatswana, which included ANC infiltration of the Bophuthatswana police and military.

However, ANC candidate for the North West Province, Popo Molefe claimed the ANC was merely supporting the people of Bophuthatswana after it became clear that their political freedoms were limited.

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.