In a leaked document produced by his foundation, Mr Mbeki warned that the governing African National Congress (ANC) was targeting white people and abandoning the party’s non-racial values.

Almost everyone in South Africa agrees that land reform has been a failure – that too much farmland, in particular, remains in the hands of the white minority.

But the former president has now accused his own party, the ANC, of making matters worse, by pushing ahead with a racially divisive plan to amend the constitution in order to seize white-owned land without compensation.

Mr Mbeki said his party was abandoning its long commitment to non-racialism, and seemed to be following the “vulgar” agenda of the populist EFF party.

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa has promised an orderly, accelerated land reform process, with an amended constitution offering greater clarity.

But many fear a complex, potentially explosive issue is being exploited for political gain.

In a leaked document, Mr Mbeki said the country had to tackle the “original sin” of colonialism and racial apartheid – but without resorting to a new racial chauvinism.

“South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white,” he said, quoting the ANC’s 1955 Freedom Charter.