Zuma urged South Africans "not to allow agent provocateurs to take advantage of this situation by inciting or fuelling racial hatred".

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 on Saturday in an attack with political overtones, according to a Reuters report.

Terre'blanche, 69, was the voice of hardline opposition to the end of apartheid in the early 1990s although his party has since played a marginal role and does not have a big following among whites, who make up 10 percent of South Africans.
The AWB urged restraint while the funeral is prepared and before the party decides next steps. At Ventersdorp, in rolling farmland over 100 km (60 miles) west of Johannesburg, party followers in paramilitary khaki laid flowers at the gate of Terre'blanche's farm.

"We will decide upon the action we are going to take to avenge Mr Terre'blanche's death," said spokesman Andre Visagie.

Terre'blanche could be buried either on Thursday or Friday this week, Visagie said.
Concerns over increasing racial polarisation have been thrown into the open by a row over the singing of an apartheid-era song with the lyrics "Kill the Boer" by the youth leader of the ruling African National Congress.