Update:
The DA has suspended its MP, Renaldo Gouws, after an old video clip of him resurfaced in which he can be heard saying: ‘Kill all the k****rs’.
The party has confirmed that he has been suspended, pending an internal investigation.
‘The DA has established that the video, in which Renaldo Gouws uses execrable language, is in fact genuine and not a fake as initially suspected. The DA federal executive has therefore suspended Mr Gouws with immediate effect while he faces disciplinary charges before the party’s federal legal commission,’ the party said in a statement
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A shocking video has emerged in which Democratic Alliance Member of Parliament Renaldo Gouws appears to spew hate speech.
Gouws says in the video, which was originally posted on his YouTube channel and later deleted, ‘Alright, so there is a couple of things I want to say. Kill the f*ing k*ffirs, and all the f*ing n*ggers. That is all I have to f*ing say. Kill all k*ffirs! Kill all the f*ing n*ggers!’
Gouws has come under fire this week for previous racial and homophobic statements, prompting his defence by DA leader John Steenhuisen, who described Gouws’ previous statements as ‘young and irresponsible’.
It is unclear whether Steenhuisen is aware of the video that has emerged.
However, the video was made available to Helen Zille, the federal chairperson of the Democratic Alliance (DA).
Zille stated that she would check the video’s veracity 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.’
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She added that Gouws is denying flat out that he ever made this video and that she would be sending it for testing.
The video was retrieved from the internet archive, which periodically collects snapshots of web pages for retrieval, and leaked to IOL.
Warning: Sensitive content
Even though this video has been removed from YouTube, it is still available in this archive.
The video was allegedly published by Gouws on 11 March 2010 under the title ‘Kill all black people’ before being deleted, but not before the content was archived.
Andrew Fraser, an open source analyst, confirmed to IOL that the video was legitimate and that it is highly unlikely that it was generated by AI.
‘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,’ said Fraser.
However, Gouws has denied that he made the video, adding that he made hundreds of videos over the years, emphasising that he would not have used those terms.
He added that he had no context from who the source is or how it could have been manipulated through audio or video AI.
Gouws’ parliamentary career is off to a rocky start, as his party has been at pains to back him while disassociating themselves from previous controversies linked to the new parliamentarian.
However, given the sensitivities within the nascent Government of National Unity, Gouws’ latest invective against black people is likely to put their loyalty to him to the test.
Gouws was sworn in as a member of parliament on Friday.
Since then, an online petition calling for his removal from Parliament has received nearly 50 000 signatures – more than enough votes to elect a member of parliament to the National Assembly.
Gouws had apologised for other videos that had resurfaced since being elected to South Africa’s highest level of representative government.
However, the video may expose Gouws to criminal prosecution.
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Picture: Renaldo Gouws / Facebook