While in school, he gave early expression to his political leanings by founding the cultural organisation Jong Afrikanerharte (Young Afrikaner Hearts).

Terre'Blanche spent three years in a Rooigrond prison for assaulting a petrol station attendant and for the attempted murder of a black security guard around 1996.

After four years of service in the South African Police, he resigned to pursue a career in politics, running unsuccessfully for local office in Heidelberg as a member of the far-right Herstigte Nasionale Party.

[16] Although Terre'Blanche would later express his regrets regarding the incident when testifying before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, he suggested that his convictions relating to the sanctity of the Day of the Vow might make his actions more understandable.

[17] In the years that followed, Terre'Blanche's speeches at public gatherings often evoked the Battle of Blood River,[16] and his oratorical skills earned him much support among the white right wing in South Africa; the AWB claimed 70,000 members at its height.

[18] In September 1977, Johannesburg newspaper The World reported that Terre'Blanche had been investigated on charges of bestiality involving a number of African bushpigs.

[19] Throughout the 1980s, Terre'Blanche continued to present himself and the AWB as an alternative to both the National Party-led government and the Conservative Party, and he remained staunchly opposed to the reform policies of P. W. Botha to establish additional, albeit still separate, parliamentary chambers for non-whites, and to grant suffrage to Coloureds and South Africans of Indian origin.

[20] Terre'Blanche viewed the end of apartheid as a surrender to communism, and threatened full-scale civil war if President F. W. de Klerk handed power to Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress.

[23] After a memorandum of grievances was presented to National Party minister Roelf Meyer and Dawie de Villiers and after an agreement that no arrests would be made, the AWB withdrew from the premises.

[26] Terre'Blanche claimed he and President Lucas Mangope of the predominantly ethnic Tswana Homeland of Bophuthatswana came to a "mutual agreement" on 17 February 1992 to aid each other in the "event of a communist threat".

[citation needed] The AWB were subsequently defeated while invading Bophuthatswana to prop up the autocratic leader of the Bantustan in 1994 and Terre'Blanche did not follow up on his earlier threats of war.

[24][30][31] Terre'Blanche claimed he had personally communicated with Mangope on 10 March 1994, prior to mobilising his men to protect the capital Mmabatho against looting and unrest.

(Vuur en Verraad, Arthur Kemp) The AWB militia assembled in an airport hangar in Mmabatho, where they were to be provided with rations and firearms.

Terre'Blanche concluded that the South African intelligence services may have set up the shooting in order to discredit the AWB, since the media broadcast footage of the individuals' emblems, but did not publicise their identity.

The Bophuthatswana police systematically began to remove the media from strategic locations, and the initial hospitality shown to the AWB militia was replaced by contempt.

In July 1989, Cornelius Lottering, a member of the breakaway Orde van die Dood group, orchestrated a failed assassination attempt on Allan's life by placing a bomb outside her Sandton apartment.

[38] Following the end of apartheid, Terre'Blanche and his supporters sought amnesty for the storming of the World Trade Centre, the 'Battle of Ventersdorp', and other acts.

Reasons for the return have been attributed principally to attacks on commercial farmers and ethnic Boers, the electricity crisis, corruption across government departments and rampant crime.

[47] He had been calling for a "free Afrikaner republic", and vowed to take his campaign to the United Nations' International Court of Justice in The Hague in a bid to secure this.

In an interview with the Mail and Guardian he said he wanted to unite 23 organisations under one umbrella, in order to take, as he had vowed, the fight of "the free Afrikaner" to the International Court of Justice.

In an interview with the Mail and Guardian, he stated that he would publish his biography, Blouberge van Nimmer (The Blue Mountains of Long Ago), in December 2009.

[52] The biography was ready for press at the time of his death and published under the name "My Storie", as told to author Amos van der Merwe.

Terre'Blanche later said that his defence attorney had resigned as a member of the ultra-conservative white Conservative Party's Volksraad and joined the ANC shortly after the conclusion of the court case.

Although he was not present when the alleged attack happened, Gabriel Kgosimang, an ex-employee of Terre'Blanche, testified that his former employer had repeatedly beaten Motshabi over the head, upper body, neck and shoulders after he crashed into him with his vehicle.

[63] The AWB website continued to claim that these accusations, along with other scandals involving him, were fabricated by the "Black Government and the left wing media".

[78] The murder took place amid a racial controversy in South Africa involving the singing of a song by African National Congress Youth League leader Julius Malema,[65][69] which includes the lyrics "Shoot the Boer" ("Dubul' ibhunu").

[80] Malema denied the song had anything to do with the murder, and defended his singing of it, saying he was "ready to die", and that he was not scared of Boers, in reference to threats that Terre'Blanche would be avenged.

Terre'Blanche's supporters also turned up at the court, singing the former South African national anthem, "Die Stem van Suid Afrika".

[87] 18-year-old Patrick Ndlovu, the other man accused in the case, was acquitted of murder due to a lack of forensic evidence, though he was found guilty of breaking-in.