Katie Hopkins, the popular English media personality and columnist who had stints with The Sun and later Daily Mail, was arrested in South Africa and banned from leaving the country on charges of spreading racial hatred.
The England-born celebrity had her passport confiscated, according to a video she posted on Twitter after the troubles she caused.
Image: Katie Hopkins
“I was detained at Joburg airport & had my passport confiscated on the orders of the ANC, trying to prevent me ENTERING the country. The slaughter of whites is a truth they don’t want told,” read one of her tweets on 6 January.
Later on, she shared a video from passport control.
“Detained at passport control on the orders of the @MYANC. Amazing security co-ordination from a country where police do not respond to white farm murders because they are ‘on lunch break’ #ANC“
Seems Katie was in a good mood for mudslinging and apparently prepared for the terrible experience.
https://twitter.com/KTHopkins/status/960810233131126784
Explaining the situation in a recorded video she posted online, Katie 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.”
She claims the reaction for South African authorities was an effort to shut her down after trying to find out and tell the story of white farmers being murdered.
“I’m not sure what’s going to happen,” Katie said at the time. “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.”
A post on her blog HopkinsWorld read: “It’s infuriating, it’s heartbreaking,” Hopkins wrote. “And the world doesn’t care. Or at least the mainstream media doesn’t care. Do you?
“Every day I’ve been down here, I’ve produced a short video clip of what I’ve seen. Brave men and women who are still fighting for their land, for their families and their future. And so many who have been killed or wounded.”
According to LADBible, Katie is currently crowdfunding the project with hope that a TV channel will eventually bid for the broadcasting rights
The 2007 reality TV contestant also, as usual, hit headlines at the weekend after posting a cryptic photo of her lying on the floor in South Africa. She was seen surrounded by emergency services after ‘ketamine’ apparently got a hold on her.
Her confessional statement showed she had taken the drug for medical reasons, particularly for a serious dislocation.
“Grateful thanks to the South African emergency services for putting me back together,” she captioned the photo. “Leaving it all on the road, to tell the truths not being told. *ketamine 1 / Hopkins 0)”.
https://twitter.com/KTHopkins/status/960145803749875713
The Celebrity Big Brother star has been accused of racism by journalists, advocacy groups and politicians, especially for her comments about African migrants on the Mediterranean, who she referred to as “cockroaches”. She also suggested using gunships to stop them, a tweet which The Sun quickly deleted for some reasons.
Interestingly, Katie has had a very rough career for her courage and often controversial views. She lost her presenter role at radio station LBC in May 2017 following her comments on Twitter about the Manchester Arena bombing.
Media reports confirm that in 2016, Mail Online was forced to pay £150,000 to a Muslim family whom Hopkins had falsely accused of extremist links.
In 2017, she got involved in a libel case and was was fined £24,000 in damages and £107,000 in legal costs to Jack Monroe, her victim of defamatory remarks on Twitter. Later in the same year, Katie forced to pay substantial damages and legal costs to Jackie Teale, a female teacher about whom Hopkins had made false claims.
Her last article with Daily Mail was published on 5 October 2017 before she left on mutual consent. Katie now works for a far-right Canadian website The Rebel Media, a job she secured in January 2018.
In her article for Rebel Media however, Hopkins claims: “They detained me under section 29(1)(d) of South Africa’s Immigration Act — which bans: ‘A member of or adherent to an association or organisation advocating the practice of racial hatred or social violence.'”
She continued, “But I am a member of no such organization and I deplore both racism and violence.
“In fact, that’s what I was doing in South Africa: exposing the racial hatred and social violence being directed against white farmers.”
