Gayton McKenzie’s big battle in 2025

Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture and Patriotic Alliance (PA) leader Gayton McKenzie has historically been able to capitalise on the powers of social media for political ends.

However, this backfired in 2025 when he was placed at the mercy of the court of public opinion after social media users unearthed a number of racial slurs posted to social media several years ago.

The controversy started when McKenzie took issue with an episode of the Open Chats Podcast that aired on 21 July 2025, when hosts Methula and Kama referred to the Coloured community as “mentally crazy” and said that “Coloured siblings chow (have sex with) each other.”

After the comments caught McKenzie’s attention, he took to social media to announce that his party would be exhausting all its legal resources to determine what action could be taken against the hosts.

In a letter of demand posted to X (formerly Twitter), the party’s legal team states that the hosts’ comments “constitute hate speech” and “unlawfully impair the dignity of a protected group.”

McKenzie also escalated the matter to MultiChoice, which he said displayed the podcast’s content on its platforms. As a result, McKenzie said MultiChoice had decided not to renew its contract with the show.

Several political parties issued statements expressing their disapproval of the comments, with the DA reporting the content creators to the SAHRC.

The Open Chats Podcast issued a formal apology, acknowledging the “hurt caused by the clip that continues to circulate online,” and that the “intention was never to cause harm or disrespect the Coloured community.”

Complaints against McKenzie

Following McKenzie’s reaction to the podcasters’ comments, social media users found his actions hypocritical, pointing to Twitter posts containing the k-word slur from over a decade prior.

As a result, many of the political parties that had been in support of the PA’s condemnation of the comments made on the Open Chats Podcast then applied the same sentiment to McKenzie’s actions.

This included ActionSA, which referred McKenzie’s comments to the SAHRC.

“He repeatedly used hateful slurs from the Apartheid era, along with other offensive references that served to degrade and dehumanise black South Africans,” ActionSA said.

The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) said that the posts, which date back as far as 2012, “are prima facie violations of the Equality Act,” and that it would be investigating them.

This means that, upon first impression, the content of the posts appears to violate the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act (Equality Act).

SAHRC Commissioner Professor Tshepo Madlingozi said that the use of the slur has been deemed unlawful in South Africa, with the Constitutional Court saying that the word is “completely unutterable.”

The Commission then announced that it had launched an investigation into McKenzie’s social media posts.

ATM’s Parliamentary leader, Vuyo Zungula, lodged a complaint against McKenzie with the Presidency, Parliament, and the Joint Committee on Ethics on Saturday, calling for an urgent investigation into his remarks.

However, Parliament’s spokesperson, Molotho Mothapo, has said he will not be probed because McKenzie’s comments were made before becoming an MP.

McKenzie responds

Following the onslaught of parties publicly accusing the minister of blatant racism, McKenzie said that he “could never be guilty of racism” but was guilty of posting “insensitive, stupid, and hurtful things a decade or two ago.”

He also took issue with the SAHRC’s statement that the racist tweets are prima facie evidence of wrongdoing and that it suggested what the penalties could or should be, making itself “the prosecutor, the judge, the jury, the sentencer and the executioner.”

McKenzie said the SAHRC’s public comments “pale into insignificance…against the public harm” they caused him.

He said he was “forced” to go public in his defence because the SAHRC “decided to rather first play to the gallery and try me in the court of public opinion” instead of giving him a fair hearing.

The minister claimed that the SAHRC “has joined itself to a political campaign against” him, which ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba has co-opted.

The Sports, Arts and Culture minister accused SAHRC chairperson Chris Nissen of failing “to hold himself up to the high standards expected” and of allowing “the prejudicial weaponisation of the SAHRC.”

Nissen, McKenzie said, is permitting the Commission to act as the “Witch-Hunter-in-Chief of South African society,” turning it “into a convenient weapon for politicians.”

He appealed to Nissen “to urgently change direction…before this matter becomes any uglier than it already is.”

The SAHRC is yet to release its findings following the investigation into McKenzie’s social media posts containing the k-slur.