South Africa: Do not pull on the devil’s tail

By on April 7, 2010
Some call for peace, others shout for vengeance. The tension is high since Saturday in South Africa after the murder of right-wing leader Eugene Terre’Blanche. This 69 year old man who was one of the fiercest defenders of apartheid, was killed Saturday in his property, but the circumstances of death remain unclear.

For the police, he would have been killed after a dispute over unpaid wages, but for the white supremacist party, the Afrikaner Resistance Movement, the murder is politically motivated. The AWB is raising a correlation between the murder and a song dating from the apartheid period, recently brought back into service by the controversial Youth League chairman of the ruling party. The song that calls to “kill the Boers”, white farmers, has been defended by the ruling party in memory of the anti-apartheid.  Its circulation caused concern in the white minority, which represents 10% of the population of South Africa and whose 3,000 members have been killed since the abolition of apartheid.
Authorities fear that the murder of Terre’Blanche is an opportunity for agitators to attempt to climb the white and black communities against each other before and during the World Cup. But the Police Minister, Nathi Mthethwa has declared that incident will not affect the 2010 World Cup, supported by President Jacob Zuma, who also intervened to urge calm. However, there are 41,000 police officers who will officiate during the tournament in a country with the highest crime rate in the world.

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