A notorious South African white supremacist leader was killed Saturday by his employees, police said, in an apparent dispute over wages.
Eugene Terreblanche, 69, was the leader of the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement, or AWB).
He was bludgeoned and stabbed to death on his farm with clubs and a machete, police said. Two of his farm workers ages 21 and 16 turned themselves in to authorities in connection with the killing.
The suspects will appear in court Tuesday, police said.
The AWB urged its members and supporters to be calm as they mourn their leader.
South African President Jacob Zuma also appealed for calm after news of the killing broke, according to the country’s national news agency, SAPA.
Terreblanche’s death comes amid a time of racial polarization in the country. A South African court last month banned the playing of a political song called “Kill the Boer,” most recently sung by radical youth leader Julius Malema. The apartheid-era song’s lyrics translate to “kill the farmer.”
South African civil rights group AfriForum condemned the killing and also called for calm in a statement on its Web site.
“These events are a call to all South Africans to come to their senses and to be aware of the extremely polarized and violent circumstances presently prevalent in the country,” the statement said.
The group also said that “all communities — white, as well as black — should refrain from reckless statements and from romanticizing violence.”
Terreblanche’s AWB is best known for trying to block South Africa’s effort to end apartheid. The group used terrorist tactics in a bid to stall the country’s first all-race vote in 1994, killing more than 20 people in a wave of bombings on the eve of the elections.
Terreblanche was convicted of the 1996 attempted murder of Paul Motshabi, a black man who worked as a security guard on Terreblanche’s farm. He served about two-thirds of a five-year sentence.
He also was convicted of setting his dog on a black man in an earlier incident..
