South Africa’s DA party suspends MPs after old videos containing anti-black remarks resurface | World News

The South African Democratic Alliance (DA) suspended a newly sworn-in member of parliament on Thursday after an old video surfaced on social media in which he called for the killing of black people.

On Wednesday, a clip from a video resurfaced on social media platforms in which the young white man Renaldo Gouws could be seen and heard making anti-black remarks.

Gouws, 41, a former local councillor in the Eastern Cape province, could not be reached for comment.

In the video, he said that his comments were in no way racist. He was simply providing context for an apartheid-era song in which the then youth leader of the African National Congress, Julius Malema, called for the killing of white farmers.

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Malema, now leader of the left-wing radical party Economic Freedom Fighters, was found guilty by a South African court in 2011 of making hate speech while singing the song.

The video featuring Gouws sparked a storm of outrage in South Africa, one of the world’s most unequal countries, where racial tensions still simmer three decades after the end of white minority rule.

The DA, the second largest party in South Africa’s newly formed unity government, said it had been determined that the video in which Gouws used “vile language” was genuine and not fake.

Helen Zille, chairwoman of the party’s federal council, said Gouws had been suspended from all party activities with immediate effect.

“His case has been referred to the Federal Legal Commission and if he wishes to defend himself he will be able to do so there. Until then, however, he is suspended from all party activities and we await the outcome of his disciplinary hearing,” she said.

The South African Human Rights Commission said it would prosecute Gouws for alleged hate speech.

The original video posted on YouTube has since been deleted, but Reuters found an archive of the video from 2011 using the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, an archive of old websites.

Reuters could not independently verify when the video was created before it was posted online.

Last weekend, a clip from another video – which Gouws admitted to posting in 2009 – was branded racist and calls for his resignation or sacking grew louder.

In response to the video, Gouws released a statement on X on Monday, apologizing for “the actions of my younger and immature self” and denying any accusations of racism.