The recently sworn in Democratic Alliance MP Renaldo Gouws has been suspended by the DA after a video clip emerged of him uttering the words “Alright so there’s a couple of things I want to say. Kill the f**ing k*ffirs, kill all the f*ing n*ggers. That’s all I gotta f*ing say. Kill all the k*ffirs! Kill all the f*ing n*ggers!”
The story was first broken by the journalist and activist Roscoe Palm and first appeared on IOL, the online media platform owned and controlled by the business magnate, Iqbal Surve. Palm is a co-founder - along with Armscor Chairperson, Philip Dexter - of the Pan African Institute of Socialism.
According to Palm’s IOL report the video, which was posted on Gouws’ Youtube Channel on 11th March 2010, and deleted well over a decade ago, had been captured on the Internet Archive, from where it was retrieved.
When initially contacted for comment by IOL the DA Federal Chairperson Helen Zille told Palm that she had “contacted Renaldo” who 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” and that he was “denying flat out that he ever made this video. I am sending it for testing.”
In statement issued yesterday the DA stated that it had “established that the video, in which Renaldo Gouws uses execrable language, is in fact genuine and not a fake as initially suspected” and that Gouws had been suspended with “immediate effect while he faces disciplinary charges before the Party's Federal Legal Commission.”
The South African Human Rights Commission also announced that it would be taking Gouws to the Equality Court for his deleted but archived remarks from March 2010. In the video, it states, “Mr Gouws allegedly calls for the killing of Black people using extremely offensive and derogatory language.” This interpretation was also the one presented by the BBC in its report on the incident.
The video was made in response to an address by then ANC Youth League Julius Malema at the University of the Free State, a short while before, where he had sung struggle songs ideating the killing of the “boers”. One such song contained the lines, "Awudubele (I) bhunu"; "Dubula amabhunu baya raypha" (“shoot the Boer/farmer they rob these dogs"), while another of Malema’s chants went: "shoot the Boer, the farmer. Shoot to kill. Shoot to kill."
In the period of the armed struggle - which in practice flowed well into the 1990s - “amabhunu” was the term used by the ANC and its armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) to describe the enemy and its agents, who were to be destroyed. It included both white and black members of the security forces, as well as commercial farmers, who were also regarded as legitimate targets of attack by MK.
From 1985 onwards MK, as part of its People’s War strategy, also called upon the “fighting youth” on the ground in South Africa to self-organise themselves into paramilitary units, arm themselves, and attack various categories of enemy, including farmers; and to also attack and rob white homes. The singing of such struggle songs was part of the indoctrination process both for MK cadres in their camps in exile, as well as members of these paramilitary units in South Africa, which is where Malema first learnt to sing them in the early 1990s.
The continued singing of such chants and songs, long after the end of apartheid, continues to divide opinion in South Africa. It is a sensitive matter for many Afrikaners and other white South Africans, many of whom have had friends and family members attacked and sometimes killed in their homes by armed gangs; and who also fear what such chants presage for their future.
On the other side, institutions such as the SAHRC itself, and more recently South Africa's second highest court, the Supreme Court of Appeal, have defended the legal right of Malema to lead large crowds in such death chants, on the basis that these are meant metaphorically or figuratively, not literally, and are aimed only at mobilising his supporters around a programme for the deprivation of the white minority of its land and other property, not its actual physical destruction.
This then is the political and historical background to Gouws’ remarks of March 2010, made direct to camera which read, in full, as follows:
“There are two things I want to say okay, "Kill the fucking k****s! Kill all the fucking n*****s!" That is all I have go to fucking say. "Kill all the k****s! Kill all the fucking n*****s!"
Alright, so now that I have your attention tell me, how did it feel when you heard that? How did it make you feel as a black man to hear that, okay? Not even to talk about white people, how did you as a black man feel hearing that? Yes, you were enraged, you were upset, it shocked you right? Okay, so now that we have the context for the vid, okay, let me explain something to you. I didn't mean anything I said there, but I wanted to evoke a response out of you, so you can understand what the next part of the vid's about.
Julius Malema, at the University of the Free State.... Now we think it is a bunch of educated people. It is a university, which means they had to have Grade 12, they had to be educated enough to go to university, okay. So Julius Malema goes there and he is basically having a conference about some random shit, basically just exposing himself in the sense of making himself more aware with the educated bunch.
So now he is standing there, and the place is filled with majority black people because he is there from the ANC. So now he stands there, he has his little speech. Firstly, he calls Helen Zille a satanist, without any fucking proof of course, he calls here a satanist. No proof whatsoever. Then he calls her a rapist. That is how he starts his speech. Then at the end he pulls out the struggle song "Kill the boer, kill the farmer". Then that entire place erupts and all of them sings it, like barbaric people, they start singing it.
What springs to my mind is that this is educated people in South Africa. This is a bunch of young people that were in no way were directly affected by apartheid, in no fucking way directly affected by apartheid, not even Julius Malema. And here they are singing about killing the boer, killing the farmer. And they are calling all of them rapists. So for those that don't know out there when in South Africa a person says "k****r", when in America a person says "n*****rs" what do you think they refer to?
They try to use a derogatory term for black people. In South Africa when a black man says "kill the boer, kill the farmer" he is not talking about farmers, he is talking about white people. Now, this has erupted in South Africa, this thing he did now. The excuse is that it is a struggle song. Well, yes, you know, the struggle ended almost twenty years ago, why the f**k are you still singing about the struggle. That is what I want to know. Recently the police chief of South Africa said they are going to look seriously at fighting the farm murders in this country. Focusing on how to stop it.
Even though apparently he says that farm murders isn't actually that severe, as what it really is. Well, I am sorry, if one person gets killed on a farm that is severe. In any body's book. If anybody gets killed in this country that is severe. And you need to look at it. But anyway... So the chief of the police in South Africa is making it a mission now to curb farm murders and here you have the ANC Youth League President singing about killing the farmer, killing the Boer.
Both of them are from the ANC, or they support the ANC, so how does that work? And then in 90 days we are going to have the World Cup in South Africa and here you have an ignorant fucking black idiot singing about kill the Boer, kill the farmer. In essence meaning kill white people. So, here we have the ANC in South Africa and the government trying to tell people to come to South Africa for the World Cup and yet one of their leading spokespersons say "kill the Boer, kill the f**king farmer". And the best part is the ANC says we are going to have a talk to him about that.
We won't fire him, we won't dismiss him. We won't discipline him. We will have a talk about this with him. And then of course every white person out there that has political person has said they are going to take this further. But we all know nothing is going to happen. But this is what I want to know. If I had to go into the street with about fifty white people singing "kill the k*****s! Kill the n*****s!" what do you think is going to happen? I will either be shot to death right there, or I will be imprisoned.
But Julius Malema said "kill the Boer, kill the farmer" with 600 odd other black people and nothing happened. And nothing will happen. So tell me is this double standards? Do you think that this is to a certain extent apartheid reversed? Don't you feel that way? I mean I can't get a job because I am white. I am being discriminated against. What happened in apartheid? Black people were discriminated against. The white people back in the day they sang about killing f**king black people.
Well, they didn't even sing, they killed black people. For instance, I am using an example, now we are in a situation where the black people are discriminating against white people and the black people are singing about killing white people. So, in essence, this is the new apartheid, and I am the sufferer of that. So, in ten to fifteen years, will I be able to be able to have an uprising and basically shoot the black people because I feel that my rights have been taken away from me?
So, in essence, this is going to be one of those reoccurring cycles where the shit just keeps on happening. That is what South Africa has come to, where people can sing whatever the f**k they want about killing an ethnicity, and nothing is being done about it. It is being classified as hate speech in South Africa and f**k all happens. But let me sing about killing the black people, what will happen? Let any white person in this country go on a public forum and sing about killing black people and then you will see what happens. That is all I have got to say. Till later, cheers.”
ENDS
