Post apartheid tensions

Shortly before the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, the extreme right wing leader, Eugene Terblanche, was brutally shot and murdered by two of his farm workers in Ventersdorp. The government was worried that this would reinforce the perception that South Africa was not a safe country. However the murder highlights a number of other issues. Black farm workers often face very difficult circumstances; white farmers are now legally bound to provide land when the farm workers have been living there for a number of years. However many white farmers have instead forced their farm workers off the land perhaps with small financial incentives, moving to the edge of towns and living in considerable poverty. Ventersdorp had been a powerful centre of the AWP; White Right Wing Party, and it had been a notorious town. The funeral was a very tense affair which was attended by Archbishop Thabo.