Chris Mahlangu gets life for ax murder of South African white supremacist Eugene Terre’blanche
A portrait of white supremacist Eugene Terre’Blanche hangs outside the Ventersdorp Magistrate court before the verdict in his murder trial on May 22, 2012
Black farmhand Chris Mahlangu received a life sentence for the ax murder of South African white supremacist leader Eugene Terre'blanche.
Mahlangu, 29, had pleaded guilty but said he acted in self-defense over a wage dispute turned violent, the Associated Press reported.
Mahlangu killed Terre'blanche, 69, in April 2010 at the farmer's home in Ventersdorp, about 80 miles west of Johannesburg.
Mahlangu, who claimed that Terre'blanche had given him HIV after sodomizing him, said he felt he'd done no wrong by ridding the world of a man some called a monster.
However, the court found no evidence that Terre'blanche had raped Mahlangu three or four times, as he had claimed, Agence France-Presse reported.
Judge John Horn had rejected Mahlangu's claims that he acted in self-defense.
Mahlangu's co-accused, Patrick Ndlovu — a teenager at the time of the killing — was this week sentenced to two years in prison, meaning he will now go free.
Terre'blanche co-founded the far right Afrikaner Resistance Movement, known by its Afrikaans acronym AWB and prominent during the dying years of apartheid.
The group opposed to South Africa's all-race democracy — at times using violence — and had demanded an all-white homeland in the post-apartheid era, according to Reuters.
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