State Security Minister Siyabonga Cwele appealed to politicians not to politicise farm murders.

The murder of farmers was a criminal matter, which had to be dealt with as a rule of law issue, said Cwele responding to points raised during debate on his budget vote in the National Assembly.

"In short, we call upon all political leaders to condemn such killings."

The recent murder of AWB leader Eugene Terre'Blanche was an example of attempts to politicise such murders.

"They don't assist us as a nation to move forward. They don't assist us in ensuring that there is cohesion, because it is through unity that we can ensure that everyone prospers in South Africa," he said.

Cwele also said there was no evidence that farm murders were committed predominantly with illegal arms from outside the country or by foreigners.

Most of the criminal syndicates operating included people who might be foreign nationals, but they consisted of South Africans in the main.

"It is our own citizens who lead these syndicates which commit these crimes," he said.

Earlier during the debate, Cwele said the government had declared war on crime and set an objective to reduce crime levels in the country, particularly violent crime.

"In this regard, we will introduce in our intelligence analysis the scoping of the extent and impact of syndicated violent crimes and annual assessment of strategic crime trends in the National Intelligence Estimate," he said.

"We will establish operations against domestic and trans-national crime syndicates.

"We will employ all the capacities at our disposal, including liaison with other foreign intelligence services to share information.

"This has proved to be useful because it builds up into joint operations with neighbouring and fraternal countries.

"We will provide actionable intelligence to assist in the prosecutions or disruption of activities of the syndicates.

"In this financial year, we will also develop a comprehensive counter-terrorism strategy, which will guide our counter-terrorism operations," Cwele said.

Preparatory work had started within the security cluster, working together with the co-operative governance and traditional affairs department and Independent Electoral Commission, to provide security assessments, set up systems, and ensure the 2011 local government elections were held in a peaceful atmosphere.

"Our primary focus will be to eliminate 'no-go areas' in order to ensure that all South Africans participate freely in the elections without any fear of intimidation," he said.

The intelligence services continued to monitor and assess xenophobia across the country, with the aim of averting the possibility of violence against foreign nationals.

"Our assessment reveals an ongoing tension between local communities and foreign nationals in various hotspots across the country.

"We will continue to work with local and émigré communities to prevent commission of these inhuman acts."

Cwele said his department would help root out fraud, theft and corruption in government through joint operations and co-ordination.

"Within the State Security Agency (SSA), we have instituted investigations in several areas, including the group insurance scheme for members," he said.

"We will release the report once the investigations are concluded and we will not hesitate to act on the culprits."

In the cluster, the department would continue working with home affairs to combat identity fraud -- which Cwele said had become a threat to national security, "the well being of our citizens and the integrity of our systems".

"We are going to increase our counter-intelligence capacity in order to assist government in the fight against corruption," he added.

"We shall conduct regular screening to those entrusted with state resources. We shall extend our vetting programmes to provincial and local government sphere," Cwele said.