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Gayton McKenzie demands race sensitivity training for Open Chats podcasters

Gayton McKenzie demands race sensitivity training for Open Chats podcasters

IOL Newsa day ago
Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture of South Africa Gayton McKenzie has called for the Open Chats podcaster to attend 'race sensitivity classes' following their racist remarks towards Coloured people.
Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture of South Africa Gayton McKenzie has called for the Open Chats podcaster to attend 'race sensitivity classes' following their racist remarks towards Coloured people.
"They should go to race sensitivity classes," he said on The Konvo Show. "I will not allow those kids to go to jail. We have restorative justice in our country. They should have no (criminal) records."
McKenzie is currently embroiled in his own racist scandal for using the K-word numerous times on social media.
He went on to say that the Open Chats podcasters' lives were threatened but that he called off those who were issuing threats.
"This is deeper than what transpired between us and them. These kids don't know that there are people who take things out of hand. People see the call of someone asking for their address.
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Northern Cape educator faces backlash after ‘blackface' incident
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IOL News

time7 hours ago

  • IOL News

Northern Cape educator faces backlash after ‘blackface' incident

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The National Dialogue is our last chance to set the nation's broken bones
The National Dialogue is our last chance to set the nation's broken bones

Daily Maverick

timea day ago

  • Daily Maverick

The National Dialogue is our last chance to set the nation's broken bones

The psychiatrist's office feels like a waiting room for parole. Shiny wooden desk. Charts piled like court evidence. Burglar bars on the windows. The man across from me is bald, calm, deliberate. His red forehead dot stares at me like a warning light. I'm hunched forward, hands clasped, as if one good argument might win me my release. 'Doctor,' I ask, voice tight. 'When will I be back to my old self? When will I be healed and off this medication?' He exhales, as if the question is an old acquaintance. 'There's more empathy for a broken bone,' he says, 'than a broken brain.' The sentence lands like a hammer. Suddenly I'm six years old in the village, clutching a hand no one believes is broken. 'Stop dodging chores,' they say. No bruising, no swelling, no proof — just pain. It takes an X-ray, days later, to convince them. A fracture you can't see still hurts. And South Africa, I realise, is limping on a leg that we refuse to X-ray. The limp we pretend isn't there We drag it into Parliament — the legislature meant to make our laws. Into court rooms — the judiciary meant to uphold them. Into the executive's chambers, from Cabinet meetings to community imbizos. And into dinner tables where jokes about 'them' pass without pushback. Occasionally, a headline or scandal jars the bone, and we wince before pretending we're fine. The latest jolt came from Minister Gayton McKenzie. In a viral podcast clip, hosts labelled coloured families 'incestuous' and 'crazy '. McKenzie's outrage was swift – press statements, legal threats, demands for respect. But like a second X-ray revealing a missed fracture, his own words resurfaced — old posts heavy with the K-word and anti-black slurs. The very injury he diagnosed in others was lodged untreated in his own record. His 'apology' included this: 'I can never be guilty of racism… I did tweet some insensitive, stupid and hurtful things a decade or two ago… I was a troll & stupid.' It's the equivalent of setting a bone without touching it. To say 'I can never be guilty of racism' while admitting to 'hurtful' language sidesteps the wound. Dismissing it as 'trolling' isn't mitigation. Trolling is the deliberate weaponising of words to wound and inflame – corrosive behaviour that should never be excused, least of all by a minister charged with reconciliation. Accountability is not humiliation — it's the first act of repair. Without it, the fracture may be acknowledged, but it will never be set. The irony of the reconciliation portfolio This matters more because of the ministry McKenzie now leads, Sports, Arts and Culture — historically one of South Africa's most reconciliation-charged portfolios. Under Nelson Mandela, sport became a scalpel for healing. Rugby in 1995 and soccer in 1996 weren't just trophies — they were moments when black and white could cheer as one. Arts and culture were harnessed to tell a shared story, not deepen a fracture. Today, that same portfolio is in McKenzie's hands. But instead of stitching the wound, his record risks tearing the scar apart. An old fracture, badly set Apartheid didn't just pit black against white. It built a ladder of worth into the nation's bones. Africans were forced to the bottom rung. Above them, Indians and coloureds — each rung pretending it was closer to safety. Whites stood at the top, every law tilted in their favour. It infected how we saw ourselves and measured others. You could be oppressed and still believe you were 'better' than the rung below. By 1985, the fracture had become so deep that thousands queued for reclassification to a 'higher' race group. Some bleached their accents; others married strategically. The government called it 'administrative'. History remembers it as desperation made policy. That's why McKenzie's slurs matter — they're not just personal failings, they echo a fracture the nation has never reset. And until that fracture is faced honestly — without denial, without selective outrage — every attempt at unity will be built on a crooked limb. The infection that set in If racism was apartheid's fracture, toxic masculinity is the infection that set in while we ignored it. Step into most political rooms and you'll see men. In spaces meant for reconciliation, too many are absent. I'm not speaking against the kind of male leadership that protects, provides and serves with integrity. I'm speaking against the strain that refuses accountability, weaponises silence and shields wrongdoing. And in South Africa, these fractures and infections feed each other — racial hierarchies defended by toxic patriarchal power, and patriarchy sustained by racial grievance. The National Dialogue can't heal if half the surgeons refuse to scrub in. Men need to show up differently — not to defend or lecture, but to listen until it burns. To say 'I'm sorry' without the 'but' lurking behind. To help set the bone they helped break. The X-ray we cannot unsee The proposed National Dialogue could be that X-ray — not the paper sort you file away, but the kind you can't unsee: jagged lines on a black screen showing exactly where the nation's bones have splintered. We're not the first to attempt this. Tunisia's civil society 'Quartet' pulled their country back from collapse in 2013, delivering a new constitution and winning the Nobel Peace Prize. In Burundi, Mandela's mediation helped broker the Arusha Peace Accords. Kenya's post-2008 truth commission stopped the bleeding after deadly election violence. Not all succeed — Yemen's collapse is a warning — but the lesson holds: when they're inclusive, action-driven, and rooted in ordinary people's voices, national dialogues can reset a nation's broken bones. From 15 to 17 August 2025, the National Dialogue Kickoff Convention will open this process, aiming to engage millions of South Africans through more than 13,000 ward-based and citizen-initiated dialogues. I will be there, not as an observer, but as a participant — ready to listen, to speak and to be challenged — because the goal is simple but urgent: turn our conversations into binding Community Action Plans that drive real change in our economy, land reform, safety and beyond. This will demand more than good intentions — it will demand that we let strangers probe the sorest parts of our national body, and that we hold still long enough for the splint to be set. If done right, it will be uncomfortable. People like McKenzie — and people like me — will have to face our fractures in public. Communities will have to speak about wounds others tell them to 'move on' from. If done wrong, it will be like doctors walking away from a patient because hospital management planned poorly — abandoning healing before diagnosis even begins. What healing really takes When my childhood fracture was finally treated, the process was simple: X-ray — bring hidden injuries into view. Diagnosis — name them for what they are. Cast — make concrete, enforceable commitments to protect healing. Time — commit beyond the photo op and press release, knowing this process is set to culminate in a 30-year national plan. Healing isn't a weekend exercise — it's a generational commitment, and nations heal the same way, only slower. The more often the bone is broken and poorly set, the harder it becomes to fix. The question that remains Back in the psychiatrist's office, I had pushed for an answer: 'How long until I'm normal again?' 'For some,' he said, 'a year. For others, three. For others, much longer. It depends on whether the injury is treated, or ignored.' South Africa's injury has been ignored for decades. The National Dialogue could be our first genuine treatment in years. But no X-ray heals a bone. The real question is the one my doctor left hanging — not whether we are broken, but whether we will set the bone… or let it rot. Because nations, like bodies, don't get endless chances. A fracture left untreated long enough doesn't just fail to heal — it becomes the shape you live with. Because if we don't set it now, we will hand our children not a healed limb, but a crippled nation, staggering into the same old potholes, bleeding from wounds we were too proud or too afraid to treat. DM

Gayton claims he intercepted 'death threats' to Open Chats Podcast hosts
Gayton claims he intercepted 'death threats' to Open Chats Podcast hosts

The South African

timea day ago

  • The South African

Gayton claims he intercepted 'death threats' to Open Chats Podcast hosts

Gayton McKenzie – the Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture – claims he intercepted death threats targeted at the hosts of the Open Chats Podcasts. The Patriotic Alliance leader made the shocking allegations in a recent appearance on Penuel Mlotshwa's podcast. Last week, the outspoken politician called out the presenters for their controversial comments about coloured people. The podcast has since been canned from the DStv line-up, with Gayton calling for the hosts to face the 'consequences' of their actions. Speaking to Penuel Mlotshwa on the Konvo Show, Gayton McKenzie addressed a viral clip of the Open Chats Podcast presenters perpetuating stereotypes about the coloured community. According to the Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture – a reformed convict and gangster – he intercepted threats against the presenters. He said: 'This is deeper than what transpired between us and them. These kids don't know that in every race, there are some people who take things into their own hands. People didnt see the call that was like 'Can someone give us the address of those kids. Where do those kids go? I was the one who called those people and said, 'Don't do that. Im handling this. But people don't see that. Those people don't know who they are messing with Gayton did not provide any evidence to back his allegations. During the podcast, Gayton McKenzie also responded to the backlash of his own racist scandal. In recent days, the minister's old tweets have resurfaced, containing various racial slurs, including the K-word. He said of one particular X post, 'The anger should be towards Gandhi, because I used his exact words and put his name there.' He added, 'Is there anybody who has come out and said I've been racist towards them? Who is the victim of the K-word you say I'm using?'. Last year, Gayton McKenzie reflected on his former life of crime and gangsterism. In an X thread, he posted: 'I joined the gangs at age 13 as an ice boy, and by age 15 I was a soldier of the gang, and at 16 I started my own gang. My life consisted of going in and out of jail. I soon became a wanted person by divisions of the police.' Gayton was finally arrested at the age of 21 and was sentenced to 17 years at the Grootvlei prison for armed robbery. He added, 'I was over the moon because I am now being certified. Going to jail or killing someone in the gang world means you have made your bones. It's like a badge of honor, going to jail was my badge of honor'. In prison, Gayton became a 'general' in the 28s, a notorious numbers gang. After his release in 2003, Gayton turned his life around and became a businessman and motivational speaker. In 2013, he founded the political party, the Patriotic Alliance. Let us know by leaving a comment below, or send a WhatsApp to 060 011 021 1. Subscribe to The South African website's newsletters and follow us on WhatsApp, Facebook, X, and Bluesky for the latest news.

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