Last week following the establishment of the Government of National Unity (GNU) which includes the ANC, DA, IFP, PA and GOOD, members of parliament were sworn into office. Unfortunately for one of those individuals, the last week has been marred by controversy.

Member of Parliament (MP) for the DA, Renaldo Gouws, has been something of an internet personality for the better part of the last decade. Aside from being active on Twitter/X, he operates a YouTube channel where he livestreams every week and shares his opinion. Gouws is also active on TikTok.

Over the last week, clips have surfaced from Gouws’ time on the internet and the opinions shared by the MP are shocking to say the least. In the latest controversy, Gouws is allegedly heard to be using racial slurs while expressing a desire to “kill” people of colour. Some have argued that the video requires context. In this instance, the context is allegedly that Gouws was reacting to the fact that the likes of Julius Malema can sing “Dubul’ ibhunu” with impunity. It was recently decided by the Supreme Court of Appeals that “Dubul’ ibhunu” or “shoot the boer” is not considered hate speech.

The video in question was sent to IOL by a source who pointed the publication to the Internet Archive. At the time, Gouws went by the username R3NDI3R online and the video in question starts off with the now DA MP stating, “There’s a couple of things I want to say. Kill all the fu**ing k*****s, kill all the fu**ing n*****s. That’s all I’ve got to fu**ing say. Kill all the k*****s, kill all the fu**ing n*****s. Alright so now that I have your attention, tell me, how did it feel when you heard that? How did it make you feel as a black man to hear that okay?”.

The MP goes on to explain in the video that has since been deleted from his channel, that his utterances are similar to Malema and Jacob Zuma’s singing of “shoot the boer”. Except, as many have pointed out, there was no need to say slurs to make that point.

The MP says in the video that the use of the slurs was to “evoke a response” and was seemingly in service of making a point. Except, Gouws isn’t standing by this content, in fact he denies ever having created it.

“Made hundreds of videos over the years. Would not have used those terms,” Gouws told IOL on Wednesday.

However, the MP also suggested that perhaps the video was manipulated using artificial intelligence.

“I don’t have actual context from who the source is and how it could have been manipulated through audio or video AI. Whether this was an old video manipulated to use those words the same way my previous videos have been manipulated and audio synched to say things I never said. I don’t have full context but as with the last couple of days there has been a clear smear campaign against me and this seems to have reached new heights,” Gouws was quoted as saying by IOL.

Could the video have been manipulated by AI? We don’t think so.

For starters, the video in question was archived by the Internet Archive which takes snapshots of web pages as they exist at a particular point in time. The video was first archived by the project in June 2011 on Gouws’ channel, way before generative artificial intelligence was operating at any sort of scale. It’s worth noting that text-to-video generation requires a massive amount of computational power.

“Sora, according to Factorial Funds, requires up to 10,500 powerful GPUs for a month to train and can generate only about 5 minutes of video per hour per GPU for inference,” Binance reported in a blog earlier this year.

Not only would 10 500 GPUs from 2011 (cards such as the GeForce GTX 500 series and Radeon HD 6000 series were out at the time) not be enough to meet the compute requirements for AI, the technology needed to train an AI model to mimic a person so effectively simply wasn’t as advanced as it is today.

Given that the video was also uploaded to his channel, the fact that he has no recollection of uploading it and then deleting it requires a stretch of the imagination in our opinion.

The idea that a video was manipulated using AI in or around 2011, published to Gouws’ own channel and then archived is not plausible. Similarly, any claims that the video was manipulated recently can be refuted by the fact that the Internet Archive captured this video six times between 2011 and 2024 and the video never changes.

The video in question also tracks with Gouws’ own fashion style. The creator can be seen wearing the same green shirt and branded beanie in other videos published at around the same time. Anecdotally, we also met Gouws in passing at a local YouTube event in 2016 when he was using the R3NDI3R name.

The MP has reportedly told federal chairperson of the DA, Helen Zille that he has no recollection of making the video and she is sending it for testing. What that testing entails is unclear as tools to detect AI video are rare and instead folks often need to rely on visual oddities such as additional fingers or facial features that are too perfect.

While we aren’t judge, jury and executioner, the idea that this video was manipulated by AI simply doesn’t make sense given when the video was uploaded.

The more plausible explanation is that Gouws made the video containing extreme bigotry to spark a reaction and he eventually got that reaction.

Calls to sack the MP have ramped up over the last 24 hours and a petition created to oust him has garnered over 3 000 signatures today alone. We suspect those calls will ramp up even further as more learn of Gouws’ video.

The DA has this morning reportedly taken action against Gouws. In a statement shared by 702’s Clement Manyathela, the DA said that it has established that the video is in fact genuine and not fake as initially suspected.

“The DA Federal Executive has therefore suspended Mr Gouws with immediate effect while he faces disciplinary charges before the Party’s Federal Legal Commission”, the DA said.

At least the DA recognises that simply claiming something is manipulated by AI doesn’t mean it was manipulated by AI.