Gayton McKenzie's repeated use of K-word unlikely to damage his standing within PA

The classic culture war debate over who is entitled to use certain words is raging again, and this time the Patriotic Alliance (PA) leader and Sports, Arts and Culture Minister, Gayton McKenzie, is in its crosshairs.

Between 2011 and 2017, McKenzie used South Africa’s most offensive racial slur in at least six tweets, as Daily Maverick has verified.

McKenzie’s 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.

An additional complication: McKenzie himself has shown little sympathy in the past for other victims of cancel culture, as his foes are now pointing out with glee.

McKenzie’s spokesperson did not respond to Daily Maverick’s request for comment on Sunday.

 One racism row after another

To understand the current furore, one must detour to another racial scandal, this one involving the young black hosts of a popular, DStv-hosted podcast called Open Chats. A clip from a recent episode of the podcast went viral this week, showing the hosts sharing offensive views about coloured South Africans — including terming them “incestuous” and “crazy”, and claiming that coloured people “sleep with their siblings”.

Outrage ensued — and one of the loudest voices calling for the podcasters’ heads was McKenzie, who announced that he was briefing the PA’s legal team to file charges against the podcasters.

On X, he subsequently said that he did not want to see the podcasters “destroyed”, but “racism has no place in South Africa”, and “to let them continue as if nothing happened is the surest way of destroying them”.

The podcasters have since lost their broadcasting deal with MultiChoice.

But not everyone was happy with McKenzie’s muscular response to a very popular podcast — particularly those with a long memory of McKenzie’s history of problematic posts on X, formerly Twitter.

Over the course of Friday evening and Saturday, multiple old tweets of McKenzie began to circulate, with those featuring the K-word causing the greatest outrage.

But they were not the only ones. In another tweet from 2012, McKenzie wrote: “Not all white guys that make black guys sit at the back of a bakkie are racist, some of these guys stink as hell [sic] an [sic] I would do the same.”

Other tweets showed McKenzie criticising black youths and saying that he would save white people above black people in certain contexts.

McKenzie is a polarising figure at the best of times, and his political rivals have leapt upon the controversy to demand his axing. 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.”

The DA said: “In past circumstances, the use of the K-word has had serious sanctions in South Africa, including dismissal, and we expect that will be the natural consequence here too.”

This was likely a reference to their own MP Renaldo Gouws, who was axed after a video surfaced showing him using the K-word as a provocative stunt to demonstrate what he saw as double standards meted out to white South Africans. In that case, the explanation of context was not seen as adequate mitigation — and many would argue that the same should apply to McKenzie.

Daily Maverick asked the Presidency on Sunday whether any action was expected from President Cyril Ramaphosa regarding McKenzie’s place in his Cabinet, but did not receive a response. McKenzie is a headache that Ramaphosa, who has axed a minister and a deputy from his executive in the last two months, definitely does not need.

Read more: Ex-DA MP Renaldo Gouws settles hate speech case, apologises for racist video

McKenzie’s knight in shining armour: Kenny Kunene

McKenzie has thus far shown no sign of backing down, tweeting: “This whole campaign to find something racist I ever said is hilarious because you have now gone 13 years back and can’t bring out one racist thing I ever said. I always and still fight that Coloureds and Blacks are one people being treated differently mistakenly.”

On Facebook, he wrote: “I’m paying this price with a smile. Coloured people are not supposed to stand up and fight back, we must be insulted and crawl back into our corner. My crime is to lead the protest against those racist young people [the Open Chats podcasters].”

Into the ring to support him rode his Patriotic Alliance co-founder, Kenny Kunene, who tweeted: “I and all members of the PA know our president is not a racist and stand firmly behind him.”

With friends like these, who needs enemies? Unfortunately for McKenzie, he could hardly have a worse person in his corner.

No sooner had Kunene finished mounting his defence than Twitter detectives began poking through Kunene’s old tweets, which turned out to be a site of untrammelled misogyny. One particularly jaw-dropping tweet seemed to suggest that a drunk woman is fair game to be raped. As commentators on social media pointed out, these tweets were posted when Kunene was in his 40s, not a foolish young man.

The news that Kunene and McKenzie are crass and boorish should surprise nobody: Kunene became famous largely for eating sushi off naked women, and McKenzie wrote a “self-help” book for women called The Uncomfortable Truth, which included such advice as: “When the bedroom door closes, no man has time for crossed legs.” The two men met in prison.

None of this has ever been hidden, and yet more than 330,000 people still chose to give these men their votes in the 2024 elections. Indeed, McKenzie’s take-no-prisoners, I-speak-hard-truths-out-loud attitude is the secret sauce to his political appeal. Even if McKenzie has been caught straying into racially problematic territory, it is highly likely his electorate will forgive him.

The “uncomfortable truth” for PA representatives and members is also that they have no choice but to forgive McKenzie if they want to remain in the party.

That is because, as Daily Maverick noted last week, the PA has no internal elections for its top leadership. McKenzie, Kunene and former journalist Charles Cilliers are the three “Founders” who, according to the party’s constitution, simply call the shots in perpetuity.

What that means: cancel culture can try its best outside the party, but within the PA, these men are uncancellable. DM