Spotlight: South Africa’s New Racial Tensions

A man whose existence was defined by racism and violence, Eugene Terre’Blanche died as he lived. In 1973, in apartheid South Africa, Terre’Blanche founded the militant white-supremacist Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement). In 1993, his supporters stormed the venue where talks were taking place between the white South African government and Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) to end white rule. This year, on April 3, the 69-year-old was bludgeoned to death on his farm outside Ventersdorp in the far north of South Africa by, according to press reports, two black workers. Police charged a 28-year-old man and 15-year-old boy with his murder.

South Africans could be forgiven for hoping Terre’Blanche’s brand of politics dies with him. Sixteen years after apartheid, the country’s racial diversity is still a basis for friction. But as opposition politicians pointed out, one reason for that is the rise of ANC Youth League president Julius Malema, a junior leader in the ruling ANC whose regular statements of black intolerance have increasingly become the axis on which South African politics turns. On the day Terre’Blanche died, Malema, 29, was in Zimbabwe praising Robert Mugabe’s regime for its ruinous appropriation of white farms and businesses. “Here in Zimbabwe you are already very far,” he said. “That’s what we are going to be doing in South Africa.” Malema’s singing of a revolutionary ditty with the chorus “Shoot the Boer” to college students in March prompted Terre’Blanche’s supporters to accuse Malema of inciting murder.

Terre’Blanche attracted attention less for the power he wielded (which was inconsequential) or his proposals for government (which fantasized a racist utopia) than his showmanship. He arrived at rallies on horseback, wielded a gold-topped cane and bellowed to the Boer volk in front of a flag whose emblem was styled after the swastika. Malema also wields little power and prefers to blame race rather than propose real solutions to South Africa’s complex problems, such as its huge AIDS/HIV population and its 24% unemployment rate. Like Terre’Blanche, Malema prizes provocation over substance and holds prejudices long considered unacceptable. Perhaps mindful that Terre’Blanche’s killing came just 68 days before the soccer World Cup brings the rainbow of humanity to South Africa, President Jacob Zuma urged his countrymen “not to allow agent provocateurs to take advantage of the situation by inciting or fueling racial hatred.” Sadly, that is precisely what Malema seems to offer.