Murder of Terre’ Blanche highlights homosexual panic defence

The South African white supremacist leader, Eugene Terre’ Blanche was murdered last week, allegedly by two black farm hands, one a man aged 28 and the other a boy aged 15. Mr Terre’ Blanche’s body was found in his bed, beaten and stabbed to death, with his trousers down to his knees.

Terre’Blance was the head of the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement, the AWB, which modelled its flag on the swastika.

At first the rumours that there was a racial motive to the killing were quickly discounted by police, saying that the killing appeared to be an argument about unpaid wages.

Now the lawyer for the 15 year old boy has hinted that the death might have been because of self-defence or homosexual panic defence. Homosexual panic defence is when the perpetrator of a killing says that he believed that the victim was coming on to him in a sexual manner, and that out of revulsion he killed the victim.

The South African paper, the Cape Argus is reporting that the lawyer for the 15 year old boy said:

“My instructions from my client are that there was some sodomy going on and it sparked the murder of Mr Terre’Blanche.

“This is going to form part of our defence during trial,” the lawyer said, adding that Terre’Blanche tried to have sex “with one or both” of the workers.

Asked whether Terre’Blanche might have been involved in gay sex, AWB secretary general Andre Visagie said: “It is impossible.”

“He told his wife he was coming home from the farm that night (to the family home in Ventersdorp).

“He wouldn’t have taken a black man instead of a white woman.”