South Africa's Democratic Alliance (DA) suspended a newly sworn-in member of parliament, Renaldo Gouws, after an old video of him calling for the killing of Black people resurfaced on social media. The video, which Gouws, a former councillor in the Eastern Cape province, could not be reached for comment, sparked outrage in South Africa, one of the most unequal countries in the world. The DA, the second biggest party in South Africa's newly formed unity government, said it had established that the video in which Gouws uses "execrable language" was genuine and not fake. Helen Zille, chairperson of the party's federal council, said Gouws had been suspended from all party activities with immediate effect. South Africa's human rights commission is taking Gouws to court 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. Reuters could not independently verify when the video was made before being posted online. Over the past weekend, a snippet of another video, which Gouws admitted to posting in 2009, was branded racist with mounting calls for his resignation or dismissal. In response to that video, Gouws issued a statement on X on Monday apologizing for "the actions of my younger and immature self" and rejecting any claims of racism.
