South African white supremacist's killer believes victim gave him HIV

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InterAksyon.com
The online news portal of TV5

JOHANNESBURG -- The black farmworker convicted of killing Eugene Terre'Blanche believes the white supremacist leader gave him HIV, a psychologist said at his sentencing hearing Monday.

Chris Mahlangu was convicted in May of bludgeoning Terre'Blanche to death in his farmhouse outside the small town of Ventersdorp on April 3, 2010.

During the trial, the court found no proof that Terre'Blanche had raped Mahlangu.

But as his sentencing hearing got under way Monday, clinical psychologist Hein Swanepoel told the court that Mahlangu believes Terre'Blanche raped him and gave him HIV, the virus that could lead to AIDS, according to the Independent Online.

"Mr Mahlangu says he is HIV positive and suspects he must have been infected by the deceased," Swanepoel said, according to the website.

"He alleges he was raped by the deceased three to four times and did not resist because the deceased was a powerful man. He did inform police about the rape and for fraudulent reasons that was not included in the statement," Swanepoel said.

The psychologist was testifying in mitigation, as Mahlangu's defense tried to convince the court to hand down a milder sentence than the possible life in prison.

Judge John Horn had rejected Mahlangu's claims to have acted in self-defense and accepted the prosecution's argument 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, 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 has largely faded from public debate.

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