South African white extremist leader Eugene Terre Blanche was freed from prison today after serving three years for nearly beating a black man to death in 1996.
Waving a riding crop and dressed in black, the 60-year-old Terre Blanche was surrounded by a small group of supporters as he rode through the streets of Potchefstroom, a conservative town about 60 miles west of Johannesburg.
A large media contingent jostled with curious onlookers, both black and white, to get a look at the once-feared leader of South Africa's far right-wing. He gave a stiff-armed salute to several supporters, who waved red flags emblazoned with Terre Blanche's swastika-like symbol.
Terre Blanche began a six-year jail sentence in March 2001 for beating a farmworker so badly in 1996 that the man was brain damaged. Terre Blanche, who was released early on parole, also served six months in 2000 for assaulting a petrol attendant and setting his dog on him.
Best known as the leader of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement) (AWB), Terre Blanche threatened to derail democratic elections in 1994 that marked the end of decades of white minority rule.
He appealed to right-wing Afrikaner sentiment by harking back to the days of the Voortrekkers, who left British rule in the Cape and travelled into the interior by horse and oxen to set up independent settlements known as the Orange Free State and Transvaal.
He was ridiculed after he famously fell off his horse during a parade through Pretoria - leading many South Africans to dismiss the AWB as a childish game of dress-up. The sparse turnout today signalled the AWB's fortunes as a political force have faded.