Thousands attend Terre'blanche funeral

Thousands of followers of the murdered South African white supremacist Eugene Terre'blanche have attended his funeral.

Two black farm workers have been charged with beating and hacking Terre'blanche to death last Saturday in what police suspect was a pay dispute, but which his party sees as politically motivated.

Terre'blanche, 69, had been marginalised after his failed efforts to preserve apartheid in the early 1990s, but the killing has exposed the racial divide that remains 16 years after the end of white minority rule.

As the coffin was wheeled into the church, mourners sang the apartheid-era national anthem. The old South African flag and the party's flag - which resembles the Nazi swastika - fluttered from pickup trucks outside.

ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema, who caused controversy last month when he sang a black liberation struggle song that includes the words "Kill the Boer", was told by the ANC to avoid inflammatory comment over the Terre'blanche killing.

The ANC condemned Malema's comments at a news conference on Thursday, as well as his expulsion of a British journalist with a barrage of expletives. It said he would be summoned to a meeting to discuss the issues raised.