Frightening quote:

Malema has been leading calls for land confiscation, forcing the ANC to follow suit out of fear of losing the support of poorer black voters. In 2016, he told supporters he was "not calling for the slaughter of white people' at least for now".

Snip

South Africa's parliament has voted in favour of a motion that will begin the process of amending the country's Constitution to allow for the confiscation of white-owned land without compensation.

The motion was brought by Julius Malema, leader of the radical Marxist opposition party the Economic Freedom Fighters, and passed overwhelmingly by 241 votes to 83 against. The only parties who did not support the motion were the Democratic Alliance, Freedom Front Plus, Cope and the African Christian Democratic Party.

It was amended but supported by the ruling African National Congress and new president Cyril Ramaphosa, who made land expropriation a key pillar of his policy platform after taking over from ousted PM Jacob Zuma earlier this month.

According to Bloomberg, a 2017 government audit found white people owned 72 per cent of farmland in South Africa.

ANC rural affairs minister Gugile Nkwinti added: "The ANC unequivocally supports the principle of land expropriation without compensation. There is no doubt about it, land shall be expropriated without compensation."

Thandeka Mbabama from the Democatic Alliance party, which opposed the motion, said there was a need to right the wrongs of the past but expropriation "cannot be part of the solution".

"By arguing for expropriation without compensation, the ANC has been gifted the perfect scapegoat to explain away its own failure," she said in a statement.

"Making this argument lets the ANC off the hook on the real impediments — corruption, bad policy and chronic underfunding. Expropriation without compensation would severely undermine the national economy, only hurting poor black people even further."

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Civil rights groups have accused the EFF and ANC of inciting an ongoing spate of attacks on white farmers characterised by extreme brutality, rape and torture — last year, more than 70 people were killed in more than 340 such attacks.

Ernst Roets, deputy chief executive of civil rights group Afriforum, said the parliamentary motion was a violation of the 1994 agreement in which the ANC promised minority interests would be protected post-apartheid.

"This motion is based on a distorted image of the past," Roets said in a statement. "The term 'expropriation without compensation' is a form of semantic fraud. It is nothing more than racist theft."

He earlier hit out at "simply deceitful" claims that "white people who own land necessarily obtained it by means of oppression, violence or forced removals".

"The EFF's view on redistribution is merely a racist process to chase white people off their land and establish it within the state," he said. "This is not only deceiving, but also a duplication of the economic policies that the world's worst economies put in place."

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Earlier this month, Louis Meintjes, president of the farmers' group the Transvaal Agricultural Union, warned the country risked going down the same route as Zimbabwe, which plunged into famine after a government-sanctioned purge of white farmers in the 2000s.

"Where in the world has expropriation without compensation coupled to the waste of agricultural land, resulted in foreign confidence, economic growth and increased food production?" Meintjes said.

"If Mr Ramaphosa is set on creating an untenable situation, he should actively create circumstances which will promote famine. His promise to expropriate land without compensation, sows the seed for revolution. Expropriation without compensation is theft".

Latest migration data released today shows that annual net migration to New Zealand was at 70,100 in the year to January, and of this 4,946 people came from South Africa.