Tempers flare ahead of Terre'blanche murder hearing

VENTERSDORP, South Africa (Reuters) - Tempers flared outside a South African court on Tuesday before the appearance of two black farm workers accused of killing white supremacist leader Eugene Terre'blanche.

Police erected a barbed wire barricade to separate a crowd of 200 supporters of Terre'blanche's Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB) from a group of black workers outside the court in Ventersdorp, 100 km (60 miles) west of Johannesburg.

AWB loyalists had been singing South Africa's apartheid-era national anthem, prompting the opposing side to respond with Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrica (God Bless Africa), the anthem introduced after the country's first multi-racial elections in 1994.

South African leaders, including President Jacob Zuma, have urged calm since Saturday's killing, and police reacted quickly to separate the two groups when a white woman threw a bottle of water, a Reuters reporter at the scene said.

The "Rainbow Nation," saddled with a reputation for crime and violence, will be in the international spotlight in a little over two months when it hosts the soccer World Cup.

Police believe Terre'blanche, who had pushed to preserve white minority rule in the 1990s, was killed over a pay dispute.

Even though analysts are not predicting any wider political repercussions, the killing has exposed the racial divide that remains 16 years after the end of apartheid.

"Whites still have all the power here. Since 1994, we have a black president but nothing has changed," said one 68-year-old woman who did not wish to be named because she was missing work.

"What those men did to Terre'blanche will show other farmers that we will not be oppressed."

The AWB has promised not to seek revenge for the death of their 69-year-old leader, who had become increasingly marginal in politics and had a tiny following among the whites who make up 10 percent of South Africa's 48 million people.

However, the murder has heightened a sense among its supporters that they are being targeted by the African National Congress (ANC), the party of Nelson Mandela that has ruled South Africa since 1994.

Julius Malema, leader of the militant ANC Youth League, caused controversy last month when he sang a black liberation struggle song that includes the words "Kill the Boer" -- now banned by the courts as hate speech.

"Before the 1994 elections, I was afraid and thought there was no place for an Afrikaner in a black country," said 73-year-old Sarie Visser, dressed in combat fatigues and bearing the AWB's swastika-like symbol on her armbands.

"Mandela assured us and made us feel better, but the government has changed now. If Malema can't be stopped, we know where we stand," she said.

(Writing by Ed Cropley, Editing by Matthew Tostevin/David Stamp)