A top member of a South African white supremacist group said April 4 that the slaying of their leader was "a declaration of war" by blacks against whites.

Andre Visagie of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging movement, better known as the AWB — which wanted to create three all-white republics in South Africa in which blacks would be allowed only as guest workers — said the group would urge soccer teams to avoid the upcoming World Cup tournament in the country out of safety concerns.

He said the group would avenge the April 2 death of leader Eugene Terreblanche but did not give anydetails.

"The death of Mr. Terreblanche is a declaration of war by the black community of South Africa to the white community that has been killed for 10 years on end," Visagie said. He echoed other members of the group in blaming a fiery youth leader for spreading hate that he believes led to his killing.

Terreblanche's violent death — police said he was bludgeoned to death by two of his farmworkers in an apparent dispute over wages — also heightened the ongoing controversy surrounding ANC Youth Leader Julius Malema's performance last month of an apartheid-era song that advocates killing white farmers.

An unknown number of white farmers have been killed since the end of apartheid in 1994, many of them in land disputes. Some critics blame the government's badly organized land reform program and allege that corruption is a problem.