[imagesource:ronaldogouws/x]

Several clips of DA MP Renaldo Gouws trended on the X platform this weekend showing the politician seemingly spewing a litany of racial and homophobic nonsense.

A new video has now allegedly surfaced, supposedly from a deleted YouTube account, that pictures the MP taking the racial abuse a step further by saying “Kill the f**ing k*ffirs, kill all the f*ing n*ggers”.

According to IOL, the video was made available to DA federal chairperson Helen Zille who said she would check the veracity of the video before commenting.

 “I have contacted Renaldo. He says he has no recollection at all of making a video with such vile language and says if one exists, it could be AI generated.”

The video was retrieved from the internet archive, which collects snapshots of web pages from time to time for retrieval and leaked to IOL. Titled ‘Kill All Black People’, the video was uploaded on 11 March 2010, but taken down soon after.

According to the online news site, analyst Andrew Fraser confirmed that the video is legit, saying it was doubtful that it is AI-generated.

“Deepfake technology has been generally available for fewer than 5 years. This video first aroused controversy in 2016, so unlikely that it was deepfaked. The video is visible on Gouws’ YouTube channel archive on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine and was archived in 2011.  The archive is of the actual Rendier YouTube Channel page, not a third party – so unlikely to have been placed there maliciously.”

Gouws is however adamant that he has no recollection of making the video, calling it a smear campaign.

“Made hundreds of videos over the years. Would not have used those terms. I don’t have actual context from who the source is and how it could have been manipulated through audio or video AI. Whether this was an old video manipulated to use those words the same way my previous videos have been manipulated and audio synched to say things I never said. I don’t have full context but as with the last couple of days there has been a clear smear campaign against me and this seems to have reached new heights.”

IOL embedded the video into their article, but frankly, the kind of criminally vile s**t that gets spewed is not something we want to spread, so you can watch the video here.

DA leader John Steenhuisen described the previous video of Gouws running his mouth as ‘young and irresponsible’.

“People say it was bad back in Apartheid. White people in this country are going through reverse Apartheid. Say whatever the f**k you want, black people were beaten and killed. What has changed? Today, white people are beaten, killed, and discriminated against. What’s the f**king difference?”

Gouws responded to criticism of the clips by saying:

“Yet with all of this being said, for some reason, I am the problem for raising these uncomfortable truths 16 years ago. Yes, I regret the colourful language used, but I suppose being 25 years old at the time and hearing the president and his youth leader, at the time, singing songs about killing me would make any reasonable person upset.

“Anyway, have a lovely public holiday and please drink a panado for the chest pains if a video from 16 years ago offended you,” he said.

Gouws seemingly apologised for the rant in a TimesLIVE interview in 2020, saying that it was “the sheer frustration of having to listen to Zuma and Malema singing the song” that led to the video.

“I have matured a lot since then, considering I was 25 years old at the time. And with age and becoming more mature, you realise that screaming and shouting and using colourful language achieves nothing.”

A snippet of a video that I posted 16 years ago (back in 2009) when I was young and still a student has been recycled and posted on social media over the last few days.

I addressed this snippet in 2016 and again in 2020 when approached by the media when it was posted on social…

— Ngamla Gouws 🇿🇦 (@RenaldoGouws) June 17, 2024

Back then DA national spokesperson Solly Malatsi said that Gouw’s views were his own and did not reflect the party, but the DA would do well to remember that if you have something rotten in your fridge, everything around it gets spoilt.

The Kiffness, one of the first to respond to Gouws’ tweet over the weekend would do well to remember that. Stick to cat videos dude.

A petition is already doing the rounds to urge Parliament to remove Gouws from the benches over the “threats and racially charged comments” that “are a direct affront to our democratic values and the harmony of our diverse society.” It has attracted 75,000 signatures already, which is ironically enough votes to secure a seat in Parliament.

It is rather curious that whoever retrieved the latest video did so after the elections. Something like this could have given the DA a serious blow if it was released in the week before May 19th.

The alleged new video does, however, cross the ‘young and irresponsible’ line and ventures into hate speech. If it does prove to be authentic, Gouws needs to go.

[source:iol&timeslive]