Renaldo Gouws remorseful for racial video made over decade ago – DA

The DA says no action will be taken against Renaldo Gouws because he has apologised for a video that has sparked outrage on social media and has been branded racist.

The circulation of the video has led to the launch of an online petition calling for the newly sworn in MP's removal from the National Assembly gaining momentum.

But the DA's director of communications, Richard Newton, said Gouws was not a member of the DA at the time that he made the video and therefore the party couldn't take any steps against him for it.

“He joined the DA three years after that video so he did not break any party rules because he wasn't a member,” said Newton.

“The DA believes that Mr Gouws is indeed remorseful for his outburst over a decade ago.”

In the video, Gouws can be heard saying: “Wow! When people say it was bad back in apartheid... the white people in this country are going through reverse apartheid. Say whatever the f*** you want alright, back in the day black people were beaten, black people were killed. What has changed?

“Today white people are beaten, white people are killed, white people are discriminated against. What is the f**** difference? Please do tell me. Call me a f***** racist if you want. But you come and live in this f***** country, and you the white individual come live here and tell me that you aren’t discriminated against and that you aren’t f***** blamed for things that happened in the past even though I had no f***** hand in it.”

He said the DA does not condone the tone and content of the video. "The DA also notes that Mr Gouws took the video down from social media over a decade ago and apologised for this video and its content in 2013," Newton said.

"The party has also been alerted to a petition  that proposes that he be removed as DA MP in the National Assembly.”.

When approached for a comment on Monday, Gouws said: “I have no comment as this keeps resurfacing every few years and I have made my stance clear previously.”

Gouws referred Sowetan to a 2020 TimesLIVE article in which he was quoted as saying he regretted “some of the colourful language” he used when reacting to Kill the Boer song.

He told Sowetan he would release a statement at a later stage.

Gouws was sworn in as  MP on Friday during the first sitting of the National Assembly.  He is a former Nelson Mandela Bay DA councillor. 

The petition calling for  Gouws’ removal as MP garnered more than 30,000 signatures in just 24 hours. 

The petition, which was started by a Kimberly Jones, stated that Gouws’ public utterances, filled with “threats and racially charged comments, are a direct affront to our democratic values and the harmony of our diverse society”.

“The recent videos of Mr Gouws circulating on social media, where he spews racial remarks against people of colour, are a stark reminder of how quickly we can regress if such behaviour is left unchecked. SA, with its freshly adopted Government National of Unity, understands the importance of collective action towards common goals more than most.

“To enable successful governance in a diverse democratic society, it is essential that all members of parliament adhere to principles of respect, understanding and equality,” read the petition.

ActionSA leader, Herman Mashaba, told Sowetan that now that they have six members representing them in parliament, they will be raising Gouws' issue in that forum.

“We cannot, as South Africans, after what we went through in many years of apartheid and we are trying to reconcile, have people who are in our new democratic parliament saying such things,” Mashaba said.

chabalalaj@sowetan.co.za