South African white supremacist leader Eugene Terreblanche killed

Terreblanche, who fought to preserve apartheid in the 1990s, has been beaten and hacked to death at his farm

Eugene Terreblanche during a speech at an Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB) gathering in Pretoria. Photograph: STR/AP

Eugene Terreblanche, the South African white supremacist leader who fought to preserve apartheid in the 1990s, has been beaten and hacked to death at his farm.

A 21-year-old man and a 15-year-old were arrested on Saturday and charged with the murder, which local media reports said they had carried out over an alleged dispute with Terreblanche over unpaid wages.

A police spokesman said that the 69-year-old, who had lived in relative obscurity in recent years, was found in bed with facial and head injuries.

Terreblanche, a former South African policeman who began to rise to prominence during the early 1980s as the leader of the Far-Right Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB), campaigned in later years for an independent white homeland.

His khaki-shirted followers were a frequent and menacing force against the background of the years of South Africa's transition from white-dominated government to majority rule. Terreblanche later served three years of a five-year term for attempted murder and was released from prison in 2004.

His murder comes against the backdrop of growing anxiety about crime in South Africa and what opposition politicians claim are racially inflammatory sentiments from some figures in the ruling ANC party.