Was South African White Supremacist Killed for Hitting on Black Workers?

A South African former paramilitary leader, white supremacist, and reported homophobe who was found "hacked and beaten," dead, and with his pants down, may have propositioned two black workers just before he was killed, media sources say.

The corpse of Eugene Terre'Blanche, a prominent member of the right-wing extremist group Afrikaner Resistance Movement, was found with his trousers down and his genitals exposed on April 3, newspaper accounts said. Police investigating the scene were divided as to reports that a condom was spotted at the site, reported News24.com on April 13. The same account also said that Terre'Blanche had been accused in the 1980s of trying to seduce a teenaged male who belonged to his radical paramilitary group, and noted that Terre'Blanche had been known to display a hatred of gays. However, the article said, he was also rumored to have had an improper relationship with a male minor, sleeping with the child in his arms at his farm residence. Terre'Blanche said that the boy had come from a "troubled" background and he was comforting him.

Terre'Blanche had been well known as the leader of the paramilitary white supremacist group when he went to prison for severely beating a black man. He was released in 2004, after which he faded from the public spotlight. But police were looking into claims, made by the two black suspects in his death, that he had bought them a number of alcoholic drinks--and had imbibed vodka himself--before taking them to his farm and then trying to persuade them to have sex with him. One of the suspects is a 15-year-old boy.

Puna Moroko, the lawyer for 28-year-old suspect Chris Mahlangu, said that, according to his client, "there was some sodomy going on and it sparked the murder of Mr. Terre'Blanche," reported Australian newspaper The Age on April 13.

Zola Majazu, the lawyer for the unnamed 15-year-old suspect, did not say exactly what his client's version of the story was, but he did tell the media that, "something shocking happened on that day. I will disclose fully what my client told me during trial."

''We are not going to focus on one thing,'' said one investigator looking into the murder, Musa Zondi. ''We will investigate all pertinent facts that have a bearing on the matter."

South African authorities had initially said that Terre'Blanche was killed over a disagreement about pay for the workers. But authorities then said that the clothing of the accused men would be examined for evidence of sexual activity that might have taken place prior to the killing, reported UK newspaper The Independent on April 12.

The News24.com article speculated that for some latent homosexuals, certain trappings might be used as camouflage: the article mentioned "uniforms and horses," but the racist and homophobic politics that Terre'Blanche subscribed to are stereotypical of some stripes of repressed homosexual. In the United States, an ongoing controversy concerning closeted gay politicians who campaign on anti-gay platforms and rack up anti-gay voting records illustrates one aspect of this phenomenon.

A far-right Austrian politician named Joerg Haider was rumored to have been secretly gay after a car crash claimed his life on Oct. 11, 2008. Haider was rumored to have been at a gay bar just before the crash; in the days following his death, his prot�g�, Stefan Petzner, tearfully described Haider as "the man of my life," the Associated Press reported in an Oct. 25, 2008, article.

The article noted that Haider was never derisive toward gays in his political life, though he did offer praise to Hitler's Nazi government, which persecuted and killed gay men along with Jews, Communists, and other groups.

Hitler himself was close to an openly gay World War I hero named Ernst R�hm, who served as the head of Hitler's Sturmabteilung, or storm troopers. Though rumors have been promoted by anti-gay organizations that Hitler himself was gay, there is no evidence to support this contention. After an internal power struggle, R�hm was arrested and executed.

The flag of Terre'Blanche's Afrikaner Resistance Movement bore a striking resemblance to the Nazi flag, with a field of red, a central white circle, and a black symbol that resembled a three-legged version of a swastika.