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Eugène Terre'Blanche

Eugène Ney Terre'Blanche (31 January 1941 – 3 April 2010) was an Afrikaner nationalist who founded and led the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB; 'Afrikaner Resistance Movement').

Biography[]

Born on January 31, 1941 on a farm in Ventersdorp, a village in the Transvaal, Terre'Blanche attended Laerskool Ventersdorp (primary school) and Hoër Volkskool in the town of Potchefstroom where he graduated in 1962. He joined the South African Police and was first posted to South West Africa (now Namibia), a territory that came under varying degrees of South African control after World War I. After his return, he became a Suboil officer in South Africa. Upon his return he became a Warrant Officer in the Special Guard, assigned to protect members of the government. In the late 1960s, Terre'Blanche became increasingly opposed to the, in his view, “liberal policies” of B. J. Vorster, then Prime Minister of South Africa. After four years of service in the police force, he resigned to pursue a political career by running in the local elections in the city of Heidelberg as a member of the Herstigte Nasionale Party. However, his candidacy was unsuccessful. In 1973 Terre'Blanche founded the Afrikaner Resistance Movement (Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging - AWB) in August, at first as a secret society. The AWB's first public appearance came after several of its members were charged and fined for assaulting and humiliating Floors van Jaarsfeld, a history professor who publicly expressed his opinion about the Promise Day holiday commemorating the Battle of the Bloody River by calling it an absurd event with little historical foundation. Often over the next few years, Terre'Blanche's speeches made reference to the Battle of Bloody River, and his oratorical skills won him notable support among the white South African right; at its peak the AWB claimed 70,000 members. Terre'Blanche was assassinated at his farm in Ventersdorp (North West) on April 3, 2010. Until his death, he remained at the head of the newly revived AWB and continued to push for the creation of an Afrikaner state separate from South Africa.

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