South African police insist it is "very unfair" to question their security plan for the World Cup just because of the machine-gun attack on the Togo team which took place in nearby Angola on Friday.
Three people were killed in the attack and although the African Nations Cup competition in Angola will go on, Togo have pulled out.
The chief executive of South Africa's local organising committee for the World Cup, Danny Jordaan, has made it clear the attacks cannot be connected in any way to this summer's tournament and South African police spokesman Vishnu Naidoo insisted it was not right to make comparisons.
He told BBC Radio Five Live: "We have been moved emotionally by what has happened in Angola but in terms of the security plan we are not concerned about that.
"It is very unfair that people should be assessing our security on the merits of another country. We should be assessed on our own merits, especially considering all the international events we have delivered successfully over the years.
"South Africa should be measured on that rather than on the strength of what has happened in other countries."
Naidoo added that South Africa had never been a target of a terror attack in the post-apartheid era but insisted that did not mean the security forces were working on the assumption that an attack during the finals in June and July was impossible.
He said: "We have never been subjected to that kind of behaviour but we don't sit back and remain complacent to our ability to host major sporting events.
"We decided that we needed to prepare ourselves for every eventuality, including the threat of terrorism and hooliganism and also organised crime for that matter."