Cape Town - The late AWB leader Eugene Terre’blanche was cut from the same cloth as Oscar Pistorius, Jani Allan says in an open letter to the murder accused athlete.
In the letter on her blog, the former Sunday Times columnist wrote: “Of course the circumstances were dramatically different from yours, Oscar… He was only to murder a man long after I left the country. But since the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour, I am sure he shed crocodile tears during his court case.”
Though Allen refers to murder, Terre’Blanche served time in jail for assaulting a petrol station attendant and the attempted murder of a black security guard.
He was murdered by one of his farmworkers in 2010.
Paralympian Oscar Pistorius is on trial in the High Court in Pretoria for the murder of his girlfriend, model Reeva Steenkamp.
On her blog, Allen tells the story of an an Afrikaans man (Terre’blanche) who “fell in love with me”.
She says she was a journalist and “he was a story”.
She recalls his obsessive pursuit of her, and says she eventually “saw an unformed man, someone who had no innate integrity, no spirituality and one who certainly had not developed as an individual. What I saw was pitiful and strange and incongruent with whom he purported to be.
The letter continues: “
Terre’blanche was cut from the same cloth as you, Oscar. He was given to boasting, vain in all things, narcissistic in the extreme and flying into terrible rages when things didn’t go his way. I suspect this description fits you.
“When I first became aware of your fierce competitiveness in the sporting arena, I was admiring of your steely determination. Then there were the eruptions of temper and your fury when you thought you weren’t fairly treated. I realized long ago that you might have been a fast runner, but you never have been sportsmanlike in your behavior. Not on the track or off it.
“It is unnecessary to repeat all the stories about guns, cocaine, fast cars and pretty girls. When there is achievement of any kind, people cluster around such a man. But your success was purely physical. You came along, the one in your generation that inspired the imagination for the journey each of us takes.
“People want so badly to be reminded of idealism, of triumph against all odds. They love a romance based on selflessness, not selfishness. They want the hero to have heart and humanity. They want him to possess psychological and physiological excellence. But the life you led was without spirit. It was a wasteland filled with expensive toys and recidivist acts.
“Oscar, you bought the gun. You chose the bullet that would cause maximum damage.”
The letter continues:
“Oscar, I look at you mewling and puking in the witness stand. You truly represent everything that the West loathes about white South Africans who live extravagant lives in their expensive laagers. Your constant and preposterously ridiculous statement that you thought it wasn’t Reeva trapped in the bathroom, but an intruder, opens yet another can of haricots. The implication of this is that it would have been more acceptable to shoot an intruder the way you did. Execution from behind a closed door.
“Oscar, like so many who preceded you, you have betrayed your people and disappointed your fans. You are the latest in a long line of faux heroes.”
Read more at janiallan.com.
IOL