* The former policeman and Afrikaner leader of the extreme right-wing revolt against the ending of apartheid was born on a farm in the conservative Transvaal town of Ventersdorp on Jan. 31, 1941.

* He founded the right-wing Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB-Afrikaner Resistance Movement) alongside six others in 1972 as a shadowy group seeking to protect the rights of the Boers' descendants. White right-wing activity in South Africa died down after the end of white minority rule in 1994. But the AWB -- whose flag resembles the Nazi Swastika -- was revived in 2008.

* In 1998, Terre'blanche accepted "political and moral responsibility" before South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission for a bombing campaign to disrupt the 1994 elections in which 21 people were killed and hundreds injured. He was later jailed for assaulting a security guard and released in 2004.

* The Afrikaners are descendants of the Boers, the first whites who arrived in South Africa 300 years ago and trekked into the hinterland to avoid assimilation with English-speaking settlers. Their short-lived republics, in the Orange Free State, Transvaal and northern Natal, were broken up after the 1899-1902 Anglo-Boer War. Terre'blanche wanted to reconstitute them.

* In January 1989 Terre'blanche faced a revolt within the AWB after he was found in the grounds of an Afrikaner monument late at night in the company of journalist and former model Jani Allan. They denied a romance, but several key supporters angry over allegations of womanising and drinking urged Terre'blanche to quit. He refused and ousted four critics in his party.