讣告

　　Eugene Terre'Blanche

　　尤金·特雷布兰奇

　　Eugene Ney Terre'Blanche, a Boer demagogue, died on April 3rd, aged 69

　　尤金·耐·特雷布兰奇，一名布尔人宣传活动家，卒于4月3日，终年69岁

　　On December 16th 1838, a small band of trekkers defeated a large Zulu army at the Battle of Blood River. Some say the white men prevailed because they had guns, whereas the Zulus made do with spears. But others think God intervened. Before the battle, the Afrikaners prayed, vowing always to commemorate that day if they won. Their descendants honoured that pledge. But a century and a half later, a disrespectful history professor at the University of South Africa suggested that the “Day of the Covenant” was nothing special and that God was not necessarily rooting for the tribe that created apartheid. Eugene Terre'Blanche was incensed. With a posse of followers, he burst into a lecture hall, poured hot tar on the professor and then decorated him with feathers.

　　1838年12月16日，一小队白人，历经长途跋涉，在布拉德河一役中击败了为数众多的祖鲁人军队。有人说，白人占上风是因为有枪，而祖鲁人用的却是长矛。还有人说，那是上帝的安排。战前，白人祈祷，如果打赢了这场战役，誓言要纪念胜利日。他们的后代子孙遵循着那个誓言。但是，一个半世纪后，南非大学的一个历史学教授贸然提出，“起誓日”没有什么特别之处，上帝不必眷顾那个创造隔离制度的种族。这让尤金 特雷布兰奇勃然大怒。他带着一帮地方武装分子，闯进了大学报告厅，把滚烫的柏油倾倒在教授身上，然后把羽毛沾在上面。

　　This act of showboating cruelty vaulted Mr Terre'Blanche to fame. Before that day in 1979, he was just a bearded racist in a country where such people were hardly in short supply. Few people noticed when in 1973 he founded a group called the Afrikaner Resistance Movement, better known later by its Afrikaner initials, AWB. He attracted as followers the kind of Boers who enjoyed donning absurd uniforms and playing soldiers. He adopted a flag that looked remarkably like a swastika, though he insisted that the design was of three interlinked 7s and represented a Christian riposte to 666, the Number of the Beast. His ideology, stripped to its essentials, was that blacks were not only inferior but also a mortal threat to the Afrikaner volk. Plenty of white South Africans agreed.

　　这次张扬斗狠的举动让尤金·特雷布兰奇恶名远扬。1979年以前，他蓄着胡须，有着种族偏见，在那个国家，这样的人并不少见。几乎没有人注意到，他于1973年成立了一个号称非洲抵抗运动的组织，AWB，为该组织的首批布尔人成员所熟知。一些喜欢身穿奇装异服和摆弄武器的布尔人为他所吸引，追随着他。他选取了一面旗帜，该旗帜的标识与纳粹党所用的十字记号极为相像，尽管他坚持说，设计图案是三个连在一起的“7”，表示的是基督徒对代号为“666”的野兽所作的机敏应答。他的思想体系归根到本质，就是黑人不仅低劣等，而且对南非白人构成致命威胁。许多南非白人同意他的观点。

　　Times, however, were changing. As the 1980s rumbled on, slowly and secretly at first, the ruling National Party reached out to the African National Congress (ANC), the main black liberation movement. Mr Terre'Blanche opposed every tiny concession. Give the black terrorists and communists an inch, he predicted, and they would destroy the country. To preserve white supremacy, he threatened a civil war. And for a while, the world worried that he might make good on his threat.

　　然而，时代在变化。20世纪80年代滚滚而来，最初，非洲国民代表大会（非国大），主要的黑人解放运动组织，慢慢地，不知不觉地上台执政。尤金 特雷布兰奇先生对黑人运动哪怕取得的微小进步均不予妥协。他预言，对黑人进行恐怖袭击，把共产主义运动向纵深发展，他们就能摧毁整个国家。为确保白人至上，他威胁要发动内战。有段时间 ，世人担心他会言出必行。

　　Eugene Ney Terre'Blanche was born on a farm in Ventersdorp, a small town in the north, in 1941. His family was of French Huguenot stock, and was said to have been in South Africa since the 1760s. His grandfather had fought against the British during the Anglo-Boer war. The young Terre'Blanche stood out among his small-town peers, leading both the school rugby team and its debating club. On leaving school, he joined the police. He provided protection for politicians, and acted in plays staged by the Police Cultural Group, which he also ran. His thespian skills were the key to his success. He had a rich, chocolatey voice and genuine charisma. Alternately thundering and whispering from the podium, he wove together biblical, historical and apocalyptic themes. He called Nelson Mandela “Barabbas from Robben Island”. At the peak of his notoriety, said that tens of thousands of commandos would rise up when he gave the word.

　　尤金·特雷布兰奇，1941年出生在北部小镇，温特斯多普的一个农场。他的家族一直信奉法国胡格诺派教，据说，自从18世纪60年代就定居在南非。在盎格鲁---布尔人战争中，他的祖父抗击英国人。在那个小镇上，年轻的尤金·特雷布兰奇在同龄人中卓然不同，他不仅带领着学校的橄榄球队，还主持着校园辩论会。离开学校后，他加入了警队，为从政者提供保护，并在警察的文化团体中上台表演,那个表演团也是他组织的。他的表演才能才是他成功的关健所在。他那如同巧克力糖般香甜的嗓音富于变化，整个人散发着超凡魅力，浑然天成。在舞台上，他时而声如洪钟，时而鬓鬓耳语，并将有关圣经、历史和启示录的主题混编在一起。他称纳尔逊·曼德拉为“罗奔岛的巴巴拉”。在其恶名达致顶峰之际，只要他动一动嘴皮子 ，成千上成的布尔人马上就能起兵造反。

　　In the early 1990s, when apartheid was dying, Mr Terre'Blanche tried violently to revive it. In 1993 his men crashed an armoured car through the glass fa?ade of a building near Johannesburg where the government was now openly negotiating with the ANC. Having driven out the delegates, Mr Terre'Blanche's bully boys held a barbecue. But when they left, the talks resumed. In March the next year, with about 100 of his followers, he invaded Bophuthatswana, a nominally independent “homeland” created by the apartheid government as a dumping-ground for jobless blacks. They drove around in their bakkies (pick-up trucks), killing black pedestrians at random, and seemed genuinely surprised when black policemen shot back at them. After three khaki-shorted AWB thugs were killed, the rest fled in disarray. And that was that for the white counter-revolution. Some of Mr Terre'Blanche's supporters set off bombs to disrupt the poll, killing around 20 people. But that was nowhere near enough to stop millions of blacks from turning out to vote.

　　20世纪90年代早期，种族隔离制度行将就木，尤金·特雷布兰奇先生力图强行让这种制度死灰复燃。1993年，他的喽罗们撞毁一辆装甲车，穿过约翰内斯堡一道玻璃外墙，来到附近一幢大楼，那里，政府正在同非洲国民大会分开进行交涉。驱散代表后，尤金·特雷布兰奇先生手下的这些打手烧烤去了。他们一离开，谈判旋即恢复。翌年三月，在100多名手下的簇拥下，他闯入了博茨瓦纳，一个名义上的独立的“家园”，由推行种族隔离制度的政府为安置无业的黑人设立的垃圾场。他们开着皮卡车，随意枪杀步行的黑人，当黑人警察向他们开枪，予以还击时，他们看上去着实吃惊不小。三个着黄卡其布短衫的暴徒被击毙，剩余的作鸟兽散。对于白人来说，形势发生逆转。尤金·特雷布兰奇先生的支持者投放炸弹来扰乱投票，造成20人死亡。但是成百万的黑人进行投票选举已势在必行。

　　The “leader”, as he styled himself, was no nicer in private. Though he won amnesty for his political crimes, he was jailed for beating one black worker into a coma and attempting to murder another. Yet unintentionally, he did some good. By making his cause look ridiculous, he weakened it. He fell off his horse at a parade. He wore green underpants with holes in them. He could fill a stadium and put on a show, but as a military commander, he was hopeless. Newspapers mocked him with punning headlines, such as “O volk! Terre'Blanche is back again”. Had he been less of a buffoon, South Africa's road to democracy might have been bloodier.

　　“头”，他这样称呼自己，私下里也不是那么好听。虽然他在政治上的犯罪得到大赦，但由于将一名黑人雇工打昏并力图谋杀另一名而被收监。然而，他无意中行了点好。他让其的事业招致越来越多的笑料，并日渐萎缩。游行时，他从马背跌落。他穿着多孔绿色内裤。他在体育馆内跑满全场进行表演，但是作为一支武装力量的指挥官，他陷入了绝望。报纸上用双关语的标题来嘲笑他，比如“喔，人民，特雷布兰奇又回来了”。要不是他那么搞笑的话，南非的民主进程可能会更血腥。”

　　In the late 1990s he released a CD on which he read his own poems. They were packed with images of wide farms, dry riverbeds, windswept veld, frolicking gemsbok and scratching guinea fowl. Even the birds were better off than Afrikaners, he grumbled: “Even the marsh-lourie has his sleeping-place and his fellows, his lourie-people.” How far, he wondered, would he have to travel to find his own volkstaat?

　　20世纪90年代晚期，他出了一张CD，里面是朗诵自己诗篇的音频。这些诗篇的意象里是宽阔的农场，干涸的河床，刮风的草场，嬉戏的大羚羊还有觅食的珍珠鸡。甚至鸟儿也比布尔人好，他咕哝着：“即便是沼泽蕉鹃也有他的栖息地，他的伙伴，他的鸟群。”他想知道，他要找到自己的布尔人国家，得走多远呢？

　　He was beaten to death last week, allegedly by two black farmworkers. The murder has sparked fears of renewed racial violence in South Africa. But the motive was apparently personal: unpaid wages and, one imagines, a less than agreeable management style.

　　上个星期，他被棒杀。据说，嫌犯是农场的两名黑人雇工。谋杀让人担心，南非的种族暴力会重新燃起。但从表面上看，杀人动机纯属私人恩怨：欠发薪水，以及想当然地认为，管理方式粗暴。