On Thursday, South African member of parliament Renaldo Gouws was suspended by the Democratic Alliance after a clip from over a decade ago of him making derogatory remarks about black people emerged and was shown to party officials. Just two days after being sworn in, a campaign was launched to have him removed from government over other clips from the same time period wherein he decried "reverse apartheid" against white people in the country.
The DA originally sided with Gouws, who claimed not to have made the video and suggested it could be AI-generated, but changed its tune after an expert concluded that it was real. In the clip, he repeatedly said, "kill the k*ffirs" and "kill the n*ggers."
"The DA has established that the video, in which Renaldo Gouws uses execrable language, is in fact genuine and not a fake as initially suspected," party leaders wrote in a statement obtained by News24. "The DA federal executive has therefore suspended Mr Gouws with immediate effect while he faces disciplinary charges before the party's federal legal commission."
Prior to the clip being deemed authentic, DA chief whip Siviwe Gwarube told the Daily Maverick that the party will always "rebuke any kind of racism and homophobia in any kind or form, because that is not what we as an organisation stand for." She noted that, "the difficulty here is that those videos were made when the person was not a member, but at the same time it is important that we retain the reputation of the organisation because we can’t have people who espouse those kinds of views in the party."
DA Federal Council Chairperson Helen Zille, who oversees the body who dealt with the matter, made it clear that, "if the video is found to be true, it's over for him," adding, "He will be removed as MP. Such language is unjustifiable and unacceptable."
Gouws, a former Nelson Mandela Bay ward councillor, took to X to apologize for the "reverse apartheid" clip, however he has not publicly acknowledged his comments in the new video, nor has he commented on the DA's decision to oust him.
