A BLACK farmworker convicted of killing South Africa’s white supremacist leader Eugene Terre’Blanche was sentenced to life in prison.
“I find no valid reason to deviate from the prescribed sentence,” Judge John Horn said, upholding the prosecution request for life in prison.
Chris Mahlangu “failed to express genuine remorse” for bludgeoning Terre’Blanche to death in his farmhouse outside the small town of Ventersdorp on April 3, 2010, Judge Horn said.
He displayed a “flagrant disregard for the deceased’s right to life.”
“You went so far as to accuse the deceased of sodomy, and undoubtedly caused the families hurt,” said Judge Horn.
Mahlangu earlier claimed that the right-wing leader had raped and infected him with HIV.
During the trial, the court found no evidence to support that claim, Mahlangu’s co-defendant Patrick Ndlovu, 18, who was a minor at the time of the killing, was found guilty of house-breaking but not guilty on charges of murder androbbery. He was handed a two-year suspended sentence.
Judge Horn rejected Mahlangu’s claims to have acted in self-defence and accepted the prosecution’s argument that the killing had been triggered by a fight over wages.
Terre’Blanche, 69 when he was killed, co-founded the far-right Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB) which violently opposed South Africa’s all-race democracy and campaigned for a self-governing white state.
Their campaign included bomb attacks ahead of the 1994 elections, which ended the white-minority apartheid state. The killing confronted South Africa with memories of its dark apartheid past, but during the long proceedings the trial had largely faded from public debate.
Source : AFP
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