Speaking at a football conference organised by the Crown Prosecution Service, South African police assistant commissioner Ben Groenewald said it was a fallacy to suggest his country was too dangerous to visit.

"Johannesburg is said to be the murder capital of the world but that is not the case," he said. "80% of all murder cases are domestic related."

He admitted, however, that muggings and robberies were still a major challenge a year before the World Cup. "In terms of our crime statistics we are looking at crimes such as house robbery, business robberies and car jackings. We are putting all our efforts into combating these."

With thousands of extra police being drafted in for the finals, Groenewald said street robberies would be monitored like never before. "Whenever there has been a major sporting event in our country, crimes against individuals goes rapidly down. No one is saying crime doesn't happen but we will deploy an additional 32,000 officers and do our utmost to prevent as much of it as possible.

"There will be areas we would not like people to go to but we will be distributing information at all entry points indicating this."

As part of the overall crime prevention, Groenewald revealed that all participating countries will be invited to send their own law enforcement officers to help prevent hooliganism. CPS prosecutors successfully infiltrated the 2006 World Cup in Germany, collaborating with the German authorities and leading to quickfire justice for scores of English hooligans.

Groenewald said he was keen for similar action to be taken in south Africa.

"We are asking each country to send up to 15 of their own policemen. We believe that when visitors see their own policemen they tend to behave better. We were not originally thinking of doing this but it is almost certain we will now utilise foreign policemen."