A RHODES Must Fall campaigner said he "couldn't stop smiling" after after passing a note to a waitress which made her burst into "typical white tears".

Oxford University law student Ntokozo Qwabe took to social media to talk of his amusement about the waitress bursting into tears when they went to pay the bill.

Mr Qwabe said when he and his "radical non-binary trans black activist" friend went to pay the bill at a Cape Town cafe they slipped a note to the white waitress.

The 24-year-old's post on Facebook said: "The note reads in bold: 'We will give tip when you return the land'.

"The waitress comes to us with a card machine for the bill to be sorted out.

"She sees the note & starts shaking. She leaves us & bursts into typical white tears (like why are you crying when all we've done is make a kind request? lol!)."

Mr Qwabe is a campaigner for the Rhodes Must Fall movement to remove the statue of Cecil Rhodes from Oriel College, and is reported by a national newspaper as being a Rhodes Scholar at Keble College.

In a second post yesterday he dismissed his comments as "a harmless political statement made in one line on a piece of paper" and claimed the "white" media was going "hysterical".

He added: "LOL! Because one moment of white tears always makes news despite the everyday unarticulated black pain the dispossessed & landless masses of this cowntry have to live through!

"WOW. Whiteness is so weak. Cute actually."

But the comments have sparked an internet backlash against the scholar, and a website set up to raise cash for the waitress.

So far the GoFundMe page has already raised $408 (£279).