The president's comments caused outrage among white landowners, with the chairman of a national group for Afrikaans speaking farmers warning the new law will be "a declaration of war."

"We are ready to fight back," said Andries Breytenbach, the group's chairman. "We need urgent mediation between us and the government. If this starts, it will turn into a racial war which we want to prevent."

The Telegraph report: Mr Zuma has lurched from one scandal to another since being elected to office in 2009, and has adopted a more populist tone since his ruling African National Congress (ANC) party suffered its worst election result last August since the end of apartheid in 1994.

The party lost the economic hub of Johannesburg, the capital Pretoria and the coastal city of Port Elizabeth to the moderate Democratic Alliance party, which already held the city of Cape Town.