The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) announced on Friday that former Democratic Alliance (DA) MP Renaldo Gouws has agreed to participate in workshops, public education, awareness activities and a diversity sensitisation session, as part of a settlement agreement.

The SAHRC has settled a complaint against Gouws relating to a video he published in 2010, which contained racially offensive and harmful language directed at black South Africans.

Following the video’s resurfacing in 2024 and subsequent complaints submitted to the commission by members of the public, the SAHRC instituted proceedings against Gouws before the Equality Court.

The commission highlighted that the matter had since been settled through the commission’s alternative dispute resolution (ADR) process, noting the terms of settlement, which it said included a full and unconditional public apology, which Gouws had issued.

The commission welcomed Gouws’s acknowledgment of the impact of his past conduct and reiterated that the right to freedom of expression must be exercised in a manner that respects the dignity and equality of all people.

In his apology, Gouws maintained that former African National Congress Youth League president Julius Malema’s singing of the ‘Kill the Boer; Kill the farmer’ song was “insensitive, offensive, divisive and deeply hurtful towards Afrikaners”, particularly to those affected by violent crime in rural areas.

However, he said he acknowledged now that his critique of this was “insensitive, offensive, divisive and deeply hurtful towards black people.”

He admitted that it was “unacceptable” for him to have used violent language to make his point.

“I accept now that these racial slurs have been correctly declared by the Constitutional Court to be unutterable and racist. Further in the video, I described Julius Malema as “an ignorant little f*cking black idiot” and referred to those who sang along with him as “f*cking barbaric people”, he said.

In the same video, he claimed that some of the policies introduced in democratic South Africa constituted “a new apartheid”, where there was a racial “double standard”, and “the black people are singing about killing the white people”. 

He maintained his political view that affirmative action and black empowerment were not being implemented in a “fair and constructive” way in South Africa. 

“…however, I now acknowledge that they cannot be equated with apartheid, which was a crime against humanity that stripped black people of any meaningful opportunities in political, economic, social and cultural spheres of life, and was maintained by, among other measures, the murder, disappearance and arbitrary detention of political dissidents on the instructions of the State,” he pointed out.

Gouws acknowledged that the language he used in that video was “unacceptable, degrading to black people and harmful to social cohesion”.

He apologised unreservedly to South Africans for the racial invective he expressed in the video itself, and for taking years to take full responsibility for it. 

Gouws stated that he despised racism in all its forms and had always been committed to building a true non-racial South Africa.

Last year, the DA terminated Gouws’s membership, following a decision taken by the Federal Executive.

DA national spokesperson Willie Aucamp, at the time said the party’s Federal Legal Commission undertook an investigation following reports of alleged racial utterances aired in Gouws’s online media posts.

The commission said it had found Gouws guilty of contravening the party’s constitution.

The party said the decision to terminate Gouws’s membership was unanimous. He lost his Parliamentary seat, as a result.

LACKLUSTRE

Meanwhile, the GOOD Party described Gouws’s apology as “lacklustre at best”, saying it read as a “curriculum vitae of the work he has done and attempts to downplay, rather than atone for, his actions”.

The party said it believed this was a “half-hearted and insincere apology”.

“…this may be good enough for the SAHRC, but it will fall short of the mark for South Africans. The SAHRC must explain what public interest was served by reaching a settlement. It sets a precedent where someone can behave with impunity and then drag the SAHRC to the settlement table,” said GOOD City of Cape Town Councillor Roscoe Palm.

Palm pointed out that Gouws could have apologised at any time, noting that he, instead, chose to do so as part of a settlement agreement.

Palm said Gouws had armed himself with crowdfunded legal assistance and was able to fight the case from a position of privilege.

“This incident plays out against the backdrop of growing right-wing groups in South Africa, fuelled by misinformation and denialism, undermining our sovereignty. In this context, Gouws’s apology, offered not out of remorse, but as a legal obligation, rings hollow,” he said.