To many, Eugene Terre’Blanche epitomised all things bad – he was a cruel, racist monster that terrorised black people in the small North West town of Ventersdorp.
He has been painted as a crazed sexpest who sodomised and physically abused his farmworkers, withholding their salaries and feeding them expired food he had bought for his dogs.
But to Martie – the woman who was married to him for 43 years – the right-wing leader was “a calm, God-fearing man” who had never been violent towards her and who had treated his workers well.
Martie on Tuesday disputed in the Ventersdorp Regional Court all claims that her husband had sodomised Chris Mahlangu, one of the accused.
“Eugene was no monster. He was great to people who worked for him. I totally disagree with what you are saying. I look at his integrity and political views… it is absurd, totally out of character.
“I would bet my life that it is not true (that he sodomised Mahlangu),” the widow said during cross-examination.
Martie also denied that her husband had had an affair with journalist Jani Allan, saying the media had been insensitive for insinuating the two had an affair.
She also disputed claims she was separated from her husband and planning to divorce him.
“I threatened him with divorce once when he came home drunk but I would never have done that,” she added.
Mahlangu’s lawyer, advocate Khomotso Tlouana, said on Tuesday the AWB leader had sodomised the accused.
He had also been sodomised, choked and physically abused before the April 3 incident when the rightwinger was bludgeoned to death.
Mahlangu, who pleaded not guilty, told the court last year that he had attacked Terre’Blanche in self-defence.
His teenage co-accused has distanced himself from the crime.
The hearing now moves to a trial-within-a-trial as the defence hopes to establish whether the police adhered to provisions of the Child Justice Act when it came to the minor accused. - The Star