- Ventersdorp, North West
Ventersdorp is a
town situated inNorth West Province ofSouth Africa .The town grew around a
Dutch Reformed Church that was established in 1866 . The town was named after Johannes Venter who owned the land the church was built on.The town's population is just 2,000 while the nearby township of Tshing has a population of around 15,000.
AWB legacy
White supremacist
Eugène Terre'Blanche was born in Ventersdrop. The town is the base ofAfrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB). Many of the AWB's major figures live in Ventersdorp, including Terre'Blanche's former driver JP Meyer. Eugene Terre'Blanche's security firm was rented out to the town council for a long time as an almost private police force. In 2000 the new black Mayor of Ventersdorp terminated this contract. Shortly thereafter he disappeared, never to be seen again and his car was found in a nearby field. The Mayor's cousin was found guilty of his murder, but some people, particularly black people, believed that Terre'Blanche had ordered the murder and that the AWB influenced the outcome of the trial.Racial segregation
The township of Tshing houses most of the town's blacks and
coloureds . The township's secondary school of 1,000 pupils is still 100% black without a single white teacher.Fact|date=May 2007The Ventersdorp High School has changed quite dramatically, with non-white students attending since 1995. These students are mostly Afrikaans speaking coloured residents of the smaller township Toevlug.
The Tshing township has a diamond mine nearby: a town councillor owned it in the early 1990s.
Changes
Despite the legacy of Apartheid and the scar the AWB has left on the town, there have been some big changes in the past 13 years. Although the beliefs of some residents have not kept pace with changes in the country, black people now have freedom to move around the town and surrounding areas. However, for cultural, and quite possibly economic, reasons most remain in the township.
External sources
*"The Leader, His Driver and the Driver's Wife", a
Nick Broomfield film (1991)
*"His Big White Self", a Nick Broomfield film (2006)
*"Here's a prank played on some of the 'townsfolk' which typically reflects that some attitudes to Blacks remain. Great video. http://www.mojoflix.com/Video/Anti-White-Racism.html
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