NOTE: This story has been updated.
A shocking new video has emerged of a Democratic Alliance Member of Parliament Renaldo Gouws appearing to spew hate speech.
In the video first published to his Youtube channel and subsequently deleted, Gouws says “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!”
WARNING VIDEO CONTAINS GRAPHIC CONTENT
Kill all black people
Gouws has come under fire this week for previous utterances that were racial and homophobic in nature leading to his defence by DA leader John Steenhuisen who described Gouws' previous utterances as 'young and irresponsible.
It is unclear if Steenhuisen is aware of the new video that has emerged.
However, the video was made available to Democratic Alliance (DA) federal chairperson Helen Zille.
Zille said she would check the veracity of the video 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.”
Zille went on to say that “Renaldo is denying flat out that he ever made this video. I am sending it for testing.”
The video was retrieved from the internet archive, which collects snapshots of web pages from time to time for retrieval and leaked to IOL.
Even though this content is deleted from Youtube, the video still exists 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.
Open source analyst Andrew Fraser confirmed to IOL that the video was legitimate and that it is highly unlikely that the video is AI generated.
“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.
Gouws however has denied he made the video when contacted for comment.
“Made hundreds of videos over the years. Would not have used those terms. I don’t have actual context from who the source is and how it could have been manipulated through audio or video AI. Whether this was an old video manipulated to use those words the same way my previous videos have been manipulated and audio synched to say things I never said. I don't have full context but as with the last couple of days there has been a clear smear campaign against me and this seems to have reached new heights", said Gouws.
A rough start
Gouws’ parliamentary career is off to a rocky start as his party has been at pains to back their man, while disassociating themselves from previous controversies of their divisive new parliamentarian.
However, the nature of the invective against black people by Gouws in the latest clip is likely to test their commitment to him, given the sensitivities within the nascent Government of National Unity.
Gouws was sworn in as a Member of Parliament on Friday.
Since then an online petition has called for his removal from Parliament which has accrued nearly 50 000 signatures - which would have been more than enough votes to elect a member of parliament to the National Assembly.
Gouws had apologised for other videos that have resurfaced since his election to the highest level of representative government in South Africa.
However this newly surfaced video could open Gouws up to criminal prosecution.
IOL has also approached the ANC for comment.
UPDATE: IOL has subsequently been made aware of, and has seen the full video Gouws has claimed provides context for his use of the words "kill the f***ing k*ffirs, kill all the f***ing n***ers".
Some have called Gouws' argument of context into question.
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