Eugène Ney Terre'Blanche is an Afrikaner white supremacist who founded the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging.

Descended from French immigrants to South Africa, Terre'Blanche's grandfather fought for the Boers in the Boer War, and his father was a lieutenant colonel in the South African Defence Force.

During the late 1960s, Terre'Blanche began to increasingly oppose what he called the "liberal policies" of B. J. Vorster, the then Prime Minister of South Africa. In 1970, Terre'Blanche, along with 6 other Afrikaners, founded the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging. His oratory skills earned him much support amongst the white population of South Africa; the AWB claimed 70,000 members at its height.

Terre'Blanche viewed the end of apartheid as a surrender to communism, and threatened full scale race war if Prime Minister de Klerk gave in to Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress' demands, however, Terre'Blanche did not back up these threats.

On June 17, 1997 Terre'Blanche was sentenced to six years in prison for assaulting a petrol station worker and trying to murder a farm hand. One of only three whites in the Rooigrond prison near Mafikeng, Terre'Blanche was released in June, 2004. During his time in prison, he became a born-again Christian and says that he has dropped many of his more extreme racist views.

External links

• Terre'Blanche's biography on the official AWB website (http://www.awb.co.za/leier_e.htm)
• Guardian Unlimited - Terre'Blanche returns to a new world (http://www.guardian.co.uk/southafrica/story/0,13262,1235281,00.html)