By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Minister of Arts, Sports and Culture (Dsac) and Patriotic Alliance leader Gayton McKenzie says he is ‘truly sorry’ for social media posts he made years ago.
Between 2011 and 2017, McKenzie used South Africa’s most offensive racial slur in at least six tweets.
His defence is that he was employing the K-word to point out harmful racial attitudes, not validate them. But this argument appears not to be landing among many black South Africans, who argue that as a man who very proudly identifies as coloured, rather than black, McKenzie is not entitled to use the K-word in any context.
“I’m the son of a black woman, I have children with a black woman, I fought my whole life for the same treatment between black and coloured people because we fought the same struggle,” McKenzie stated.
The minister denied ever using racial slurs to attack individuals directly.
“In my entire life, I have never called anybody the K-word. Never,” he said during the live broadcast.
Despite his denials, McKenzie acknowledged problematic past behaviour.
The minister characterised the scrutiny as politically motivated, pointing to the timing and resources involved.
“Do you know they went back 11 years? Do you know how much money it is to have people investigate each and everything that you’ve done in your life?”
McKenzie described the situation as “the most humiliating, embarrassing, angry… It’s something that makes my blood boil.
ActionSA has asked the SA Human Rights Commission to investigate McKenzie, with the party’s president, Herman Mashaba, posting: “The more I read what [Gayton McKenzie] says about US, the more angrier I get [sic]. We have been insulted and dehumanised for centuries, brutally so. It is not going to continue under a democratic government. Apology is not good enough.”
McKenzie is a headache that president Cyril Ramaphosa, who has axed a minister and a deputy from his executive in the last two months, definitely does not need.