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Vice Blog

JUSTICE FOR TERRE'BLANCHE'S BALLS

Eugene Terre'blanche's genitals have been back in the news this week. Friday, as the South African neo-Nazi was laid to rest in an XXL coffin, and along with him his genitals, many had pause to recall what those genitals were most famous for: Being inserted into journalist

Jani Allan

. Allan sued Channel 4 for libel after

Nick Broomfield's documentary

flagged the unlikely affair between the two. She lost. Badly. The court transcripts read like a bawdy novel: Terreblanche asleep on the couch in his green underpants. A witness spying a pair of massive, fleshy buttocks thrusting back-and-forth. Allan, who had once pronounced herself "transfixed on the flame of his blowtorch eyes," in the end became best known for being impaled on the end of his racist dick. But it was on Wednesday this week that the genitals once again held court over South Africa's chattering-classes, when it was reported that prosecutors investigating the Terre'blanche's murder had made a charge of

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crimen injuria

against his two alleged killers.

Crimen injuria

refers to attempts to humiliate the victim of a crime during the execution of the crime itself. In this instance, Terre'blanche's genitals were allegedly humiliated by being exposed to his bedroom. After they'd smashed his sleeping head in with a

knopkerrie

[traditional African club], the assailants, it seems, pulled down his pants. It was this insult-to-injury that presumably won the pair wild cheers from the black crowd who'd gathered outside the Ventersdorp Magistrates Court. To the Afrikaaner extremists who have been descending on the town from as far as 1300 km away, it was the final outrage. "The people who committed this crime are animals and barbarians," announced Pieter Steyn, AWB spokesman. "There was nothing left of Mr Terreblanche's head. It was all over the walls, the ceiling and the curtains." But the law is a funny thing. Lawyers are honor-bound to get their clients off, so when the case comes to trial, it will no doubt be argued by the defence that Mr Terre'blanche's genitals arrived in their

al fresco

state of their own accord. I imagine their line will run something like this:

The Leader arrives home with one thing on his mind: the pursuit of his own genitals. Later that afternoon, person or persons unknown break in, assuming that the house is empty. After all, according to his wife, Terre'blanche had originally been scheduled leave his farm and drive back to his house in town that afternoon. As they patrol the corridors, the burglars are startled to find The Leader, pants around his hefty knees, eyes tight shut, evidently fantasizing about making love to one or more of his domestic servants, lost in a mephitic reverie of sweet self-relief. And so, presented with this challenge to their attempt to steal his VCR, they react as startled burglars are wont to: Club his brains onto the kitsch wallpaper and flee the scene.

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No doubt Jani Allan will be called back to testify about Eugene's bedroom habits. Ventersdorp's chief vendors of pornographic literature will be asked to flesh out the circumstantial case: his taste in

Barely Legal Babes

and

Spunk Slurping Cougars

. The maid will be asked to decide whether she could be classed as "fanciable". Perhaps his wife will even get a look-in. Justice will be seen to be done. A truly canny lawyer might attempt the David Carradine Defence: that Terre'blanche had ingeniously burst his own head like a watermelon in pursuit of some obscure sex-game. Best of luck to such brave legal-eagles. As he shines down on us all from heaven, perhaps Terre'blanche will find it charmingly ironic that his career in public life began with a piece of

crimen injuria

itself. The AWB's rise to prominence in the 1980s was launched by press coverage of their attempt to literally tar-and-feather an aging, mild-mannered Afrikaans academic named Floors van Jaarsveld. Floors had dared to suggest that the anniversary commemorating the Afrikaaner-Zulu battle at Blood River should become a more-secular public holiday. Wasn't Terre'blanche a nice man?

GAVIN HAYNES