Afrikanerweerstandbeweging (AWB) leader Eugene Terre’Blanche might appeal Thursday’s Pretoria High Court judgement against his application to be declared a suitable candidate for correctional supervision, his counsel said.
”We had a good application. It had good merits. There was no reason to refuse it,” attorney Gerrie Basson told reporters after judgement was handed down.
Terre’Blanche (58) is serving an effective six-year sentence at Rooigrond prison near Mafikeng for the attempted murder of security guard Paul Motshabi in 1996. Motshabi was left permanently disabled.
In June this year, also in the Pretoria High Court, Judge Fanie Mynhardt set aside a decision by the Department of Correctional Services that Terre’Blanche was not eligible for correctional supervision.
He ruled that there were deficiencies in the procedure the department had followed and ordered it to reconsider its decision. The department again decided against Terre’Blanche.
The AWB leader brought an urgent application to the court in July, asking it to nullify the department’s decision and to declare him a suitable candidate for correctional supervision.
Judge President Bernard Ngoepe, however, struck the case off the role, saying it was not urgent. A new application was brought against the commissioner in the North West.
In Thursday’s judgement, handed down by Judge Essop Patel on his behalf, Ngoepe said he could find no fault with the way the commissioner had handled the matter.
”It is therefore not necessary to deal with the merits.”
He also ordered Terre’Blanche to pay the legal costs. If Terre’Blanche had won the case, it would have been referred back to Potchefstroom regional magistrate Chris Eksteen, who sentenced him in the first place, to decide whether or not to convert the remainder of the sentence into one of correctional supervision.
Basson said Terre’Blanche had been looking forward to the judgement and would be disappointed.
”We were confident we would win. Else we would never have attempted it,” he said.
”We will just have to follow the routes the judgement opens up for us.”
Terre’Blanche will become eligible for parole in August next year. His client was very thin and far below his normal weight, Basson said.
”He has to eat certain foodstuffs to keep his bowels moving, but he does not get them.”
Basson said he had already objected to this in writing.
”The other inmates mock him and snarl certain things at him. He puts up with that. He does not get involved in confrontation.”
Terre’Blanche had completed a course in anger management as prescribed by the prison authorities.
”They could not perceive any aggression in him anymore… He is a completely different person to the one that went in there. He is much calmer, much more introverted. He quotes passages from the Bible and regrets his crimes.”
Basson said Terre’Blanche, who was once a wealthy man, had lost all his assets due to legal costs. His wife Martie was living in a Ventersdorp house that her brother was renting for her.
Motshabi had sued him for damages of R3-million, but there were no assets left with which Terre’Blanche could pay him, Basson said. He could not say to how much the legal costs amounted, but estimated it was over R1-million.
He applied to the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein to allow him to appeal his conviction and six-year sentence on the attempted murder case, as well as a one-year term on an assault charge, which were to run concurrently.
The court refused his application on the assault conviction and sentence and later also turned down his appeal against the attempted murder sentence. – Sapa