Katie Hopkins detained in South Africa for inciting racial hatred

Katie Hopkins claims she has been detained at a South African airport and had her passport confiscated on grounds of inciting racial hatred. The outspoken media personality had been in the country reporting on the alleged persecution of white farmers.

In a Twitter video, posted on from Johannesburg Airport on 6 February, Hopkins said: "At passport control, I've been through security and I've been detained, my passport has been marked for spreading racial hatred here in South Africa, for trying to find out and tell the story of white farmers being murdered."

"I'm not sure what's going to happen, they've taken my passport away from me but it doesn't look like at this present time I'll be allowed to board my flight and leave the country," she added.

Hopkins has been in South Africa for several days interviewing white farmers who claim they are being targeted by black gangs.

A fundraising page for the trip encourages supporters to donate to the "independent journalism" project.

In addition to the video tweet, Hopkins wrote: "I was detained at Johannesburg airport and had my passport confiscated on the orders of the ANC [the governing party]...

"Amazing security co-ordination from a country where police do not respond to white farm murders because they are 'on lunch break'... The slaughter of whites is a truth they don't want told."

The 42-year-old's trip has already garnered notable media attention after a photo of her collapsing on the floor under the influence of ketamine went viral.

Hopkins explained that South African emergency services had administered her with the powerful painkiller after she dislocated her shoulder.

On 4 February she lambasted the British press for paying little attention to her reports on the suffering of white farmers only to "salivate like dogs over meat" when she received a serious injury.

In April 2015, Hopkins attracted criticism for her own journalistic ethos when she wrote, in a column for The Sun: "Make no mistake, these migrants are like cockroaches. They might look a bit 'Bob Geldof's Ethiopia circa 1984', but they are built to survive a nuclear bomb."

The piece, written under the headline, "Rescue boats? I'd use gunships to stop migrants", went on to describe migrants trying to access Britain from Calais as a "plague of feral humans."

Hopkins rose to fame on the reality TV show The Apprentice before enhancing her profile on I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here and Celebrity Big Brother. In recent years, she has become a controversial yet influential right-wing commentator.

The ANC and South African police have yet to comment on her apparent detention.