The Safety and Security Minister, Mr Steve Tshwete, has ordered an investigation into an attack in which a white woman was assaulted by knife-wielding white men who labelled her a "kaffirboetie", the South African equivalent of "nigger lover".
The woman, Ms Wanda Stofberg, identified her assailants, wearing balaclavas, as white men apparently angered by her sale of meat to black and coloured people. "They were definitely white," she said.
To make their point her attackers used a scissors to carve the letter "K" - for kaffirboetie - on her chest after hitting her over the head with a hard object and throwing her to the ground.
Kaffir, an Arabic word meaning infidel or unbeliever, is used in South Africa as a term of contempt for the indigenous black people. It is deeply offensive to them. Use of it can lead to charges of wilful abuse of the dignity of the victim.
Ms Stofberg's "offence" - for which she had already received threats - was that she ran a butchery on her property in the town of George. She had applied without success to the local council for permission to do so. Her application angered, to quote her words, "snobbish white people".
The attack led to protest demonstrations in George by African National Congress supporters, who blamed the Democratic Alliance-controlled town council for the attack. The Mayor, Mr Marius Swart, however, pointed out that none of the ANC council members objected when Ms Stofberg's application was rejected.
Brutal inter-racial attacks occur regularly in "non-racial" South Africa. They usually attract maximum attention from the media, unlike the interracial friendships which are helping to overcome the bitter legacy of South Africa's history of white supremacy.
Mr Tshwete labelled the assault on Ms Stofberg as an "outrageous racist attack". He sent an investigator from Pretoria to help track down the assailants.