OUT TO LUNCH

It’s been a pretty lousy second half of the year for Renaldo Gouws who has been dragged by the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) to the Equality Court on charges of racism, incitement to violence and hate speech.

The year didn’t start too badly at all for Renaldo who found himself as a potential Democratic Alliance parliamentary candidate ahead of the end of May general election. Once the election results were known Gouws was sworn in as a member of parliament and presumably looked forward to serving the community as he had done as a councillor for Nelson Mandela Bay.

The allure of a fat parliamentary salary plus all the perks that go with the job must have also seemed attractive, not to mention the potential of a long political career for a man who was only forty one when elected to office.

But it was not to be because Gouws was suspended from the DA shortly after the election which meant that he was unable to sit as a member of parliament. Talk about being hung out to dry.

The reason for his suspension, the loss of the well paying job in the National Assembly and the obsessive attention of the SAHRC was a video he made and uploaded to YouTube way back in 2010 in which he used those terribly naughty words beginning with N and K that seem to send social justice warriors and virtue signallers into a twitching, semi-epileptic seizure. ___STEADY_PAYWALL__

Although the video had been long deleted by Gouws, copies of it still existed, buried deep in online archives, and our courageous legacy media managed to get hold of it and rebroadcast it constantly for the benefit of those who had missed it the first time around.

Or to be more correct, selected excerpts of it. The bits with the naughty N and K words which would guarantee clickbait and bring the advertisers flooding to our ailing media’s online offerings. The first rule of the new journalism is always take something out of context if it supports your political views. If it gets somebody cancelled or sacked then so much the better.

I did actually see the original video that Renaldo Gouws posted and, while it was hardly subtle in its approach, the message was clear. Here was an angry Afrikaans man having a staged online tirade about the injustice of some members of South African society being allowed to call for the slaughter of white people when any similar response from white people is regarded as a crime. Only a complete moron would seriously argue that Gouws was calling for the killing of black people. But one thing we are not short of in South Africa is morons.

We only need to think of poor Penny Sparrow who was hounded to an early grave for an unwise comment on social media which referred to black people as monkeys following littered beaches near where she lived on New Year’s Day. The SAHRC slapped a blue light on the car and swung into action dragging the 70 year old Sparrow to the Equality Court where she was fined R150 000 (just the sort of amount an elderly woman has kicking around for emergencies) and marked as a social pariah by the media.

Can you even begin to imagine the concomitant pressure on her extended family? I doubt whether the ensuing stress helped with the colon cancer which was to take her life two years later but why on earth would that be of any concern to a dedicated virtue signaler?

Gouw’s case at the Equality Court last thursday has now been postponed to May 2025 for some reason. Presumably to give the vultures at the SAHRC time to gather more dirt on him.

Meanwhile the SAHRC has suggested a R100 000 fine (doable thanks to crowdfunding), an apology and community service (WTF do they think being a councillor in Nelson Mandela Bay was?) although the court appearance next May could change those conditions or, if they have any sense of propriety, kick the whole case out as a waste of court time.

Following Andrew Donaldson’s excellent piece last week (Our “toxic” SAHRC) where he lightly mocked the head of the SAHRC Rev Chris (Hardbody) Nissen and hinted that some have mentioned that the good Reverend may not just have been full of the Holy Spirits at meetings, the social media spotlight has been on the SAHRC this past week.

Other recent media reports also suggest that the SAHRC has become something of a joke and is no longer fit for purpose since it seems to have become nothing more than a bullying propaganda machine for the ruling party.

This is a great pity because the whole point of the SAHRC is it should be there to investigate genuine cases of human rights abuses and to protect all South African citizens, irrespective of colour, race, religion or sexual preferences. That it seems to have turned into a vindictive thought crime enforcement agency focussed on a very small percentage of the population is why it has little credibility.

Last week I sent this e-mail to Dr Eileen Carter who appears to be presiding over the Gouws case in the Eastern Cape:

Dear Dr Carter

Could you please tell me why Renaldo Gouws is any more racist than Julius Malema? I would just like to inform my readers so we don't have any more of these hugely upsetting racist incidents.

Kind regards David Bullard @Politicsweb

I mentioned this on Twitter (X) and 22 000 read the Tweet with 40 replying and expressing an interest in her response. I have no doubt that Dr Carter is an immensely busy woman what with all the racism and other ‘isms’ flying around the place but feel confident that she will respond when she has a moment. After all, as a chapter nine institution charged with guarding our democracy, surely we all have a right to information?

If the SAHRC has gone the same way as so many other government organisations then it wasn’t always so.

My first brush with them was way back in 1998 after I wrote a column for the Sunday Times suggesting that African-Americans accompanying US president Bill Clinton to SA (he brought 800 people with him on his state visit in March of that year) like to come here to discover their roots until they realise they would probably be living in shacks with no running water had their ancestors not been abducted by slave traders.

Groot kak as I believe the local lingo has it. There were complaints of racism to the SAHRC and I was summoned to appear before the inquisition on a certain friday morning.

Unfortunately, I had already been invited by Porsche to the launch of their new 911 Turbo in the South of Spain so I wrote an e-mail to the SAHRC apologising for my non attendance and told them that, as a devout Catholic, I was on a pilgrimage to worship at the shrine of Santa Portia di Turba. I arrived back on the Friday morning of the hearing to listen on the radio to my editor gallantly defending my freedom of speech. I’m sure Barney Pityana enjoyed the joke as much as I did.

The second brush with the SAHRC was after the now famous ‘Uncolonised Africa’ column appeared in the Sunday Times in April 2008. The one that resulted in my sacking five days later.

Thanks to much fanning of the flames from the mainstream media the SAHRC were obliged to intervene after several people were persuaded to make written complaints demanding an appearance in the Equality Court for a very serious infringement of section 10 of the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act 4 of 2000 and calling for a huge fine and, if possible, imprisonment.