: 16-18, 34 The Second Boer War military leader Danie Theron was her great-great-uncle. : 14 She is from an Afrikaner family, and her ancestry includes Dutch as well as French and German. Her French forebears were early Huguenots in South Africa. : 14 'Theron' is an Occitan surname (originally spelled Théron) pronounced in Afrikaans as. She grew up on her parents' farm in Benoni, near Johannesburg.
On 21 June 1991, Theron's father, an alcoholic, threatened both teenaged Charlize and her mother while drunk, physically attacking her mother and firing a gun at both of them. Theron's mother retrieved her own handgun, shot back and killed him.
The shooting was legally adjudged to have been self-defense, and her mother faced no charges.
