Killers meant to castrate white extremist: S.African police

The alleged killers of South African white supremacist Eugene Terre’Blanche planned to castrate him but decided against it, a policeman testified as the murder trial resumed Tuesday.

Farm worker Chris Mahlangu, 29, told police how he and a 16-year-old boy had beaten to death the co-founder of the far-right Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB), according to Lieutenant-Colonel Tsietsi Mano.

The pair took an iron rod from a store room at Terre’Blanche’s farm, climbed though a window to his home and attacked him in his bed, Mahlangu told the Ventersdorp High Court.

“Mahlangu then hit Mr Terre’Blanche on the forehead with an iron rod. Two other blows followed on the face. There was a lot of blood… caused by the injuries. He repeatedly hit Terre’Blanche on the chest,” Mano was quoted as saying by Sapa news agency.

“His colleague took the rod from him. He hit Terre’Blanche in the face … some few blows on the chest as well,” Mano said.

They then decided to castrate the farmer, he said.

“Mahlangu said he pulled Terre’Blanche’s pants down and exposed his genitals. His intention was to dismember Terre’Blanche. But he decided against it.”

The pair deny killing the right-wing leader at his farmhouse outside the small northwest town of Ventersdorp on April 3, 2010.

Their trial put the spotlight on racial tensions in South Africa 16 years after the end of white-minority rule, but local interest in the trial has waned nearly two years after the killing.

Shocking accusations against Terre’Blanche as well as the police investigation into his murder have emerged in the trial, which has been repeatedly delayed.

The minor said Terre’Blanche had sodomised him, which the leader’s family denies.

A policeman earlier testified he had changed his affidavit of the murder report under pressure from Mano, who was his superior.