South Africa’s sport, arts and culture minister, Gayton McKenzie, is under investigation by the country’s human rights commission for historical social media posts containing a highly offensive racial slur, reigniting a debate about racism, identity and the lingering effects of colonialism and apartheid.
McKenzie, an anti-immigrant populist from the Coloured community with a history of stirring up controversies, was given a Wednesday evening deadline by the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) to issue an approved apology, undergo sensitivity training, donate to an agreed charity and delete the X posts, which were still online at the time of publication.
The posts came to light after the hosts of a podcast called Open Chats said on an episode that Coloured people committed incest and were “crazy”. The podcast segment was later removed.
McKenzie’s Patriotic Alliance party, which got 2% of the vote in 2024 national elections and draws its support mainly from Coloured people, filed complaints with the police and the SAHRC. McKenzie told the national broadcaster: “There should be no place to hide for racists.”
Social media sleuths soon unearthed posts made on X between 2011 and 2017, where McKenzie had used the word “kaffir” – a racial slur for black people – though he was not directing it at particular individuals.
In posts on X on 11 August, McKenzie denied being racist and said he was also Black.
“I did tweet some insensitive, stupid and hurtful things a decade or two ago, I was a troll & stupid,” he wrote. “I cringe when seeing them and I am truly sorry for that. I shall subject myself to the investigation.”
Tshepo Madlingozi, the SAHRC’s anti-racism commissioner, told a local TV channel, Newzroom Afrika, on 17 August: “The use of the K-word has been declared unlawful. The use of the K-word, to quote the constitutional court, is unutterable … the court has made it very clear that it is one of the most offensive slurs that one can use.”
He said of the posts still being online: “The harm is ongoing, the harm continues and the alleged offences are still there.”
The white minority apartheid regime, which took power in 1948, forcibly separated South Africans into Native, Coloured, Indian and White categories. It lumped together mixed-race people – descendants of south-east Asian enslaved people, Khoisan Indigenous communities and Europeans – as Coloured and gave them slightly better benefits than their Black counterparts.
Today, official data is still collected in four racial categories – Black African, Coloured, Indian/Asian and White. Coloured people were 8.2% of the population in the 2022 census.
The tensions that the apartheid “divide and rule” strategy fostered are still evident.
“In my entire life, I have never called anybody the K-word, never. We are the victims. This is a political campaign,” McKenzie said in a Facebook Live video on 10 August. McKenzie and his spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.
Tessa Dooms, co-author of the book Coloured, said: “Even if what he had to say was not meant to be derogatory, in a context where Coloured communities have been accused of anti-blackness, the use of that word by a very prominent Coloured figure in society would always be read in the context of presumed anti-blackness.”
She said that while some Coloured people were racist, “anti-blackness was cultivated as part of the apartheid project”.
The enduring tensions are owing, in large part, to many communities still living in the separate areas forced on them by apartheid, said Jamil Khan, who researches Coloured identities at the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study.
Khan said: “What this shows us, really, is that South Africans don’t really know each other.”
