By Lesedi Sibiya-Diplomatic Insider
Minister of Sports, Arts & Culture Gayton Mckenzie has come under fire from the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) due to a post he made on X ( formerly Twitter) in 2011 in which he used the K-word slur as well as making xenophobic comments. This has been investigated by the SAHRC, although McKenzie has denied these allegations.
“I’m very happy that this opportunity is coming up where I can defend myself. I’m going to come out of here as a person who hates racism. I’m going to take this up to the Constitutional Court so that everything they said, I said, we can prove.” said McKenzie in light of these allegations.
The South African Human Rights Commission has given McKenzie till Wednesday to respond to the allegations made against him.
The controversy intensified further when McKenzie went live on social media to address the comments made by the “Open Chats Podcast” regarding their offensive conversation surrounding the coloured community, in which he allegedly also used racial slurs when discussing actions taken by the Patriotic Alliance against the podcast.
McKenzie has expressed that he refuses to apologise for his remarks because he believes that he did nothing wrong.
“Not because I’m arrogant. Because I’m not a racist. I’ve not said racist things. Just know that I’m not going to apologise because I didn’t say racist things.” said McKenzie during a live broadcast on Monday evening.
McKenzie explained that certain media outlets and politicians have misconstrued his words.
“Some of those tweets, they said, I said this. I was fighting racism. Like the one guy was saying, racism. I said, bt. I said people should go for life in jail for racism. I didn’t have any hate speech.” added McKenzie.
McKenzie has also criticised ActionSA over a meeting that took place in 2016 where Julius Malema had allegedly said in a meeting that he would “cut the throat of whiteness” which McKenzie denounced as sounding hateful towards white people.
McKenzie has assured his supporters that he is not intimidated by anyone and is confident that the truth will come out.
“They will not scare me. I think they say. I’m going to break it down for you in the equality court. And you’ll see at the end of the day, I will come out victorious.”