Fear and anger over racist killing in South Africa

Venterdsorp: A motorcyclist wearing a Scream mask pierced the deceptive calm outside the murdered Eugene Terre'Blanche's homestead near Venterdsorp yesterday afternoon.

The man walked up to a wire fence outside the farm, ignoring the flowers laid in sympathy beside the long grass, and hung up a flag. On it were the spray-painted words: "Ethnic cleansing. Afrikaner genocide."

Ever since the Anglo-Boer war more than a century ago, when an estimated 28,000 perished in Lord Kitchener's concentration camps, the descendents of Dutch and other European settler farmers in South Africa have felt a heightened sense of vulnerability.

Today, the threat is perceived as coming from the country's black majority, which gained power with the election of Nelson Mandela in 1994, following the demise of racial apartheid.

Mandela's creed of reconciliation seemed distant today as the violent death of Terre'Blanche focused fear and anger on rightwing websites, where feelings were already escalating in reaction to Julius Malema, leader of the African National Congress (ANC) youth league.

Malema's persistent singing of an apartheid-era protest song containing the line "Kill the Boer" led to a media storm and a gagging order from a provincial court on the grounds that it could incite violence.

Malema has been described by the Freedom Front Plus party as "an accessory to the wiping out of farmers in South Africa". Last month, the civil rights group AfriForum took a list of more than 1,600 victims of farm murders to the ANC's headquarters, Luthuli House. Members of the ANC youth league pushed them away and scattered the list on the street. AfriForum said the youth league deliberately trampled on the names and tore the list to pieces.

"It is extremely perturbing that they actually trod on the names of the murder victims," said Ernst Roets, the national chairman of AfriForum Youth.