Renaldo Gouws, a member of the Democratic Alliance (DA), has recently come under scrutiny for a video he made 16 years ago.
The video, which was first posted on YouTube but subsequently deleted, contained racial slurs and hate speech directed at black people.
Gouws, who was sworn in during the first sitting of parliament, has since been suspended from all party activities pending a hearing.
In response to the legal battle that Gouws now faces against the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), BackaBuddy, a South African organization, has launched a campaign to raise funds for his legal costs.
Over R35,000 has already been raised to support Gouws. BackaBuddy argues that there is a double standard in how racism is addressed in South Africa, noting that the 15-second clip of Gouws’s video was taken out of context from a longer, 6-minute video.
BackaBuddy has also criticized mainstream media, for not airing the full video where Gouws allegedly explains that he did not mean the words he used but was trying to highlight double standards in racial issues.
They claim that the media has misrepresented Gouws’s intentions by only showing a brief, inflammatory segment of the video.
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The DA has suspended Renaldo Gouws from all party activities while the hearing is pending. Gouws has apologized for the videos, stating that they were made when he was young and did not know better. Despite the controversy, the fundraising campaign continues to gain traction, underscoring the polarized opinions on this issue in South Africa.
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