Johannesburg - He led him to his bedroom, grabbed him by the neck and threw him onto the bed before ripping his pants off and raping him.
It was a day he refers to as “the day of sin” – and possibly the day Afrikaner right-wing leader Eugene Terre’Blanche allegedly infected him with HIV.
Describing Terre’Blanche as a brutal man who often punched him with fists and hit him with a sjambok, Chris Mahlangu said the man he bludgeoned to death had sodomised him three or four times during the four months he was in his employ.
And each time, he would offer him liquor before attacking him.
This was revealed in the Ventersdorp Circuit court on Monday as a psychologist who assessed Mahlangu testified in mitigation of sentencing.
“He did not inform anyone because he was embarrassed. According to Mr Mahlangu, he is HIV-positive and speculates that he might have been infected by the deceased,” said clinical psychologist Henk Swanepoel.
On the day, Terre’Blanche was bludgeoned to death with a heavy steel pipe, Mahlangu had consumed 12 of the 18 ciders Terre’Blanche had bought him, the court heard on Monday.
“Mr Mahlangu states that he did not defend himself because the deceased is a powerful man. He is not sure if the deceased used a condom or not… The sex lasted three to four minutes.
“He had been raped before – three or four times – and it was always in Terre’Blanche’s bedroom,” said Swanepoel.
Mahlangu said Terre’Blanche lured him into his bedroom after he went to the farmhouse in search of his suitcase. He had hoped to go home for the Easter long weekend as he missed his wife and two children. However, he could not go as Terre’Blanche had insisted that he would pay their wages only once his two missing cattle were found.
Resolving to leave without the money, he had returned to his living quarters and found that his suitcase was missing. When he approached Terre’Blanche, the AWB leader allegedly lured him into his bedroom, and it was there that he was shown the suitcase.
“Mr Mahlangu states that the deceased took him to his bedroom and showed him that his suitcase was in the bedroom.
“According to Mr Mahlangu, the deceased then grabbed him by the neck, threw him on the bed, ripped off his pants and raped him,” said Swanepoel.
After the alleged rape, Mahlangu told Swanepoel that he left Terre’Blanche’s bedroom, went outside and requested his suitcase by speaking to Terre’Blanche through a window.
“The accused states that the deceased then exited the farmhouse and again grabbed him by the neck. He broke loose and ran away to another window which he broke and climbed through [into the house] in order to get his suitcase,” said Swanepoel.
Once inside the house, he alleges that he saw Terre’Blanche with a panga, prompting him to grab an iron rod he saw next to Terre’Blanche’s bed to defend himself.
“According to him, the deceased was holding his pants with one hand and the panga with the other. He states that next to the deceased’s bed was an iron rod, which he grabbed and proceeded to hit the deceased on the head.
“Mr Mahlangu states that the deceased fell on the bed and he kept on hitting the deceased on the head. He reports that he hit the deceased five times, but never with a panga. He reports he went to a tap outside the house to wash the blood off his hands,” Swanepoel testified.
Describing Mahlangu as an “unsophisticated, socially inhibited” person of “low intellect”, Swanepoel said Mahlangu told him his “heart is feeling bad that he [Terre’Blanche] is dead”.
But while Mahlangu described Terre’Blanche as a bad person who always shouted at him, his widow, Martie Terre’Blanche, described him as “a person of integrity”.
“I lost more than 14kg. If I drive past the farm, I experience the death 10 times over,” she said in a report read by social worker Johan Engel.
Engel also read a report by social worker Mabel Leseyane, the woman who assessed Mahlangu’s co-accused, Patrick Ndlovu. Ndlovu was acquitted on the murder charge and convicted only on housebreaking with intent to steal.
In her report, Leseyane recommended correctional supervision as Ndlovu has already spent two years at a facility for minor offenders in Klerksdorp.
The trial continues.
The Star