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The older suspect was walked out of the courthouse hours later to a rapturous welcome from blacks outside who screamed, ululated and whistled their support.
"Hero! Hero! Hero!" they chanted.
"We are celebrating the death of the man who has abused us so much," one woman in the crowd shouted.
The brutal bludgeoning of Eugene Terreblanche, once convicted of beating a black farm worker so badly the man was left brain damaged, has focused attention on simmering racial tensions less than 10 weeks before South Africa hosts the World Cup.
In a musical duel outside the courthouse, whites and blacks sang competing national anthems from
A violent confrontation easily could have erupted after a middle aged white woman sprayed an energy drink on blacks singing "God Bless Africa."
Instead, police officers rushed to separate the two groups yelling at each other and the only apparent blow struck was thrown by a black police officer whose fist grazed the jaw of a white man.
Police set up coils of razor wire to separate the two groups – whites waving old flags signifying white rule in support of Terreblanche’s family and blacks supporting the family of the 15-year-old suspect and his 28-year-old co-worker.
Afterward, the militant whites apologized for the woman’s behavior.
Community leader Bomber Matinyane said the display of racist flags was angering people. He said whites should stop waving them and blacks should stop singing the inciting song with lyrics that include "kill the farmer."
Blacks outside the courthouse sang other songs dating from the struggle for majority rule that finally came in 1994 after years of state-sponsored violence by the white minority regime and urban guerrilla warfare waged by the African National Congress.
Brenda Abrams, a 30-year-old black businesswoman outside the courthouse complained that a "big fuss" was being made about Terreblanche’s death.
"But nobody says anything when black farmworkers are killed by farmers," Abrams said.
Authorities say Terreblanche, 69, was bludgeoned to death Saturday in his bed. The 15-year-old’s mother told AP Television News that the suspects killed the farmer because he hadn’t paid them since December. When they asked for their money, she said, he threatened to kill them.
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