DA urges ethics committee to urgently probe EFF’s Paulsen over offensive Facebook posts about Coloured community 

16 November 2020

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has laid a complaint against the EFF Member of Parliament, Nazier Paulsen with Parliament’s Ethics Committee, following a series of very offensive and derogatory posts about the Coloured community on his social media.

The DA condemns in the strongest terms the comments made by Paulsen via his Facebook page, where he refers to Coloured people as “brown pets” and “monkey face.” (see here , here, here, and here)

We call on the Ethics Committee to meet urgently in order to deliberate on his offensive remarks as we cannot allow a situation where Members of Parliament openly use derogatory and offensive language against an entire community and get away with it.

These utterances are not only dehumanizing, derogatory, and offensive to the Coloured community, but it also goes against the ethical values and standards of behaviour that public representatives are expected to uphold.

The DA now urges the Ethics Committee to urgently expedite a probe into Paulsen’s conduct, as this is not the first time we have laid a complaint of this nature against him.

The DA has also previously referred both Paulsen and EFF leader, Julius Malema, to the Ethics committee over social media post seemingly inciting violence.

South Africa’s moral fibre has slipped down a very poisonous and gruesome path, Parliament cannot continue to allow its members to behave in this manner. Doing so sends a wrong message to people of South Africa and diminishes the standards and the values of public office.

Issued by Natasha Mazzone, Chief Whip of the Official Opposition, 16 November 2020