Five suspects linked to rightwing groups were arrested in police raids that uncovered major caches of explosives, illegal guns and ammunition.
Fears of racial violence flared up last month after the murder of the white supremacist Eugene Terre'Blanche. Some members of his group, the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement, or AWB), swore revenge, warning warned foreign tourists and footballers to think twice about their safety at next month's tournament.
Nathi Mthethwa, the police minister, said officers had "swept" a number of areas soon after the 11 April expiry of a three-month firearms amnesty.
He said arrests made in the administrative capital, Pretoria, concerned people who were "manufacturing arsenals of destruction". He added: "They were going to test some of their explosives in any black township."
Zweli Mnisi, a spokesman for Mthethwa, said the five arrests had been made in Pretoria and the western town of Worcester and had a "strong linkage to rightwing operations".
He added: "Police, through our intelligence, swooped on large cache of firearms, including explosives, illegal guns, ammunition. At this stage we won't divulge much as it may compromise investigations. We commend our members for the sterling job."
In 2002, the then president, Thabo Mbeki, blamed extremists for 10 bomb blasts that killed a woman and wounded two others. Nine of the bombs exploded in Soweto, a black township near Johannesburg. But, Mthethwa added, threats of a race war had been blown out of proportion, particularly by British tabloid newspapers. "There is no such thing as a race war," he said. "But we're not taking anything for granted.
"Nobody will disrupt the World Cup … They won't do that because we are monitoring everything in the country."
South Africa has around 44,000 police officers dedicated to the month-long event, which is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of fans from around the world.
Mthethwa insisted: "Our readiness ranges from personnel to state-of the-art equipment, information communication technology and co-operation with the security agencies from the 31 participating countries."
But the national police commissioner admitted today that a possible World Cup visit by the US president, Barack Obama, is causing a major security headache.
"One challenge is the American president, who is coming, not coming; coming, not coming: it is 50-50," General Bheki Cele told parliament's portfolio committee on police.
"Our famous prayer is that the Americans don't make the second round," Cele said, to laughter from MPs and police officials. "We are told that if it goes to the second or third stage, the US president may come. At the moment we have 43 heads of state provisionally confirmed. That 43 will be equal to this one operation."
Anneli Botha, an expert on terrorism at South Africa's Institute for Security Studies, said she did not think white extremists would target the World Cup because they were unlikely to attack foreigners. But Botha said police had to prepare for any possibility.
The Guardian
