Eugene Terre’Blanche would never have looked at another man sexually, let alone sleep with a black one. “It is not only totally absurd, but unthinkable that a man who fought for his nation, for the preservation of the Boer nation, would go as far as having a sexual relationship with someone of another nation,” André Visagie, former Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) secretary, said.
Visagie was the man who sparked the “don’t touch me on my studio” rumpus soon after the right-wing leader’s murder.
Speaking outside the Ventersdorp Regional Court on Wednesday, Visagie said Terre’Blanche would not have stooped “as low” as to have a homosexual relationship.
“(Homosexuality) is not acceptable in our culture. It (homosexuality) is against what we stand for as a nation,” he said.
Visagie was reacting to claims by a farmworker – accused of killing Terre’Blanche – that the AWB leader slept with other men, and had sodomised him before and on the day he was bludgeoned to death at his Witrantjiesfontein farm in 2010.
Visagie said he had formed his own right-wing group – Gelofte Volk or People of the Covenant – because he thought it was now up to him to take forward Terre’Blanche’s struggle to preserve Afrikaner culture.
Visagie sat side by side with Terre’Blanche’s brother, Andries, on Wednesday as the defence sought to prove that police who had arrested the teenager standing trial with Mahlangu had contravened the Child Justice Act, which came into effect two days before the murder.
Under this act, the police should have ensured the minor was placed in an unmarked police van, called a probation officer before taking the teenager on pointings-out of the crime scene and before taking a statement from him.
Cross-examining Lieutenant-Colonel Frans Jacobs on Wednesday, the teen’s attorney, Zola Majavu, said the police had trampled on the teenager’s constitutional rights.
Jacobs has admitted that the way the teenager’s arrest was handled contravened the act as he was bundled into a marked police vehicle with Mahlangu.
His colleague, Detective Constable Emmanuel Mthembu, was questioned on the accuracy of the interpretation he had facilitated between Jacobs, the teenager and his mother.
Mthembu had been called in to interpret as the teenager was read his rights during his arrest.
But Majavu argued Mthembu had failed to read out the rights correctly, leading the teen and his illiterate mother to agree to things they did not understand. “… you didn’t read it correctly (that the child had the right to remain silent).
“Do you accept certain meanings (can) get lost in translation?” asked Majavu. Mthembu agreed.
Majavu said the teenager would also dispute that the signature on the statement was his.
The trial continues.