Documents written in 2012 reveal that the SSA, working with secret services of other countries, foiled at least two al-Qaeda/al-Shabaab
... the personification of Somali state failure...
suicide kabooms in South Africa between 2007 and 2010. One target was a Jewish centre in Cape Town.
Another of the attacks was also aimed at a conference it seems, though whether that was also a Jewish event is not clear.
The SSA linked the faceless myrmidons who were planning these attacks both with al-Qaeda and al-Shabaab, the Somali myrmidon group which is fighting to topple the precarious government of that failed state.
The so-called "white bomber" Samantha Lewthwaite (aka Natalie Faye Webb), a British citizen who is suspected of involvement in al-Shabaab attacks in Kenya, figures prominently in the SSA reports.
As we already knew, she lived in South Africa between 2009 and 2011 under a stolen South African identity. She is still believed to be working for al-Shabaab.
Although the reports don't mention this, intelligence agencies suspected at the time that al-Shabaab intended to carry out an attack against the US embassy in South Africa in 2009. All embassy buildings were shut for several days.
The plans for an attack had apparently been intercepted in calls between an al-Shabaab operative in Somalia and Somalis in South Africa. So it seems that the al-Qaeda/al-Shabaab operatives are at least ready to target Jewish and US interests in South Africa. This illustrates the problem with the thesis that South Africa will be spared because it is not considered politically hostile -- or not as much as others.