South African police are investigating allegations of attempted rape as part of the investigation into the murder of white supremacist Eugene Terre'blanche.

The lawyer for one of the two black farm workers charged with the killing that heightened racial tensions was quoted as saying that Terre'blanche was killed after trying to have sex with at least one of the defendants.

‘My instructions from my client are that there was some sodomy going on and it sparked the murder of Mr Terre'blanche,’ Puna Moroko, attorney for 28-year-old Chris Mahlangu, told the Sunday Times newspaper.

A police spokesman confirmed that was among possibilities being investigated.

Police had earlier said a pay dispute had led to the killing of Terre'blanche, on the political margins since his efforts to preserve apartheid in the early 1990s.

‘We are not going to focus on one thing,’ said Musa Zondi of the Hawks investigative unit, adding that a sexual link was among the many accusations being made over the case.

‘We will investigate all pertinent facts that have a bearing on the matter,’ he said.

General Jan Mabula, head of the Hawks in the North West Province, told City Press newspaper the suspects' clothes were to be examined as part of checks into whether there was a sexual link.

Zondi did not comment on that.

Terre'blanche was hacked and battered to death on 3 April and found with his trousers pulled down after a murder that has showed up the racial strains in the country.

Terre'blanche's Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB) has rejected any suggestion of a homosexual link to the murder of its leader, who was one of the most vocal proponents of Apartheid.