South African President Jacob Zuma called for calm on Sunday after the killing of white far-right leader Eugene Terre'blanche in a suspected pay dispute with black workers fanned fears of racial strains.
Police detained two farm workers and said they were investigating the quarrel they had with Terre'blanche, but his Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB) says he was battered and hacked to death in an attack with political overtones.
Zuma, who has made it a priority to court white Afrikaners, called it a "terrible deed" and urged South Africans "not to allow agent provocateurs to take advantage of this situation by inciting or fuelling racial hatred".
Terre'blanche, 69, was the voice of hard-line opposition to the end of apartheid in the early 1990s although his party has played a marginal role since then and does not have a big following among the 10 percent of white South Africans. The AWB urged restraint while the funeral is prepared and before the party decides next steps. In Ventersdorp, in rolling farmland over 100 km (60 miles) west of Johannesburg, party followers in paramilitary khaki laid flowers at the farm gate. "We will decide upon the action we are going to take to avenge Mr Terre'blanche's death," said spokesman Andre Visagie.
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