WATCH: Nota Baloyi Says White People Are ‘Just Below Human Beings’
A podcast clip from South Africa is getting renewed attention for all the wrong reasons.
Nota Baloyi, a South African rapper, music producer, and commentator, appeared in February 2025 on “The Hustler’s Corner Podcast” with host DJ Sbu. The full episode covered music and culture, including Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl Halftime Show, Ye, Drake, and other big names in hip-hop.
Then the conversation took a much darker turn.
During the episode, Baloyi launched into a racist rant about white people. He tried to frame it as science, but the claims were ugly, sweeping, and flat-out wrong.
“The problem that South Africans have right now is that we don’t understand white people. White people are [an] inferior species to us. We are Homo sapiens. They’ve got Neanderthal blood in them.
“This is the science, and this is not science that was done by black people. It was done by them,” he told Sbu.
That claim falls apart fast.
The Smithsonian’s human origins page states it plainly: “The species that you and all other living human beings on this planet belong to is Homo sapiens.”
There is no separate “inferior species” of living humans. That is not science. It is dehumanizing rhetoric dressed up in a lab coat.
Baloyi also leaned on the idea that Neanderthal ancestry somehow separates white people from the rest of humanity. But that talking point is also badly outdated. A 2020 paper in the journal Cell found that “African individuals carry a stronger signal of Neanderthal ancestry than previously thought. We show that this can be explained by genuine Neanderthal ancestry due to migrations back to Africa, [predominantly] from ancestral Europeans.”
In other words, Baloyi’s argument is not only racist. It is scientifically sloppy.
He continued by claiming white women are less suited to have children than black women, then tied that to the idea that the white population is shrinking. “When you look at the white population shrinking and shrinking and shrinking, for us, it makes no sense to descend into the savagery that they have. Whatever land that they’re holding onto, either way, their numbers are dwindling.”
Baloyi went on to call white people the “last generation” and the “weakest whites that the world has ever seen.” He also insisted he was not racist, even as he kept repeating the same dehumanizing claims.
Then came one of the most disturbing lines from the exchange.
“Unfortunately, by the strictest definition of what a human being is, white people are just below human beings. You are negotiating with an animal, a wild dog that you’re trying to train to be tamed.”
That kind of language should alarm decent people everywhere. History has shown again and again where dehumanizing speech can lead. Once a group is described as animals, savages, or less than human, the door opens to abuse, discrimination, and violence.
Baloyi also claimed, “Everywhere in the world white people have gone and progressed, they’ve progressed because of savagery.
“There’s not a place the sun shines that white people have not decimated the people.”
His comments are not the only example of anti-white rhetoric coming from high-profile figures in South Africa.
In July 2023, Julius Malema, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters, led a packed rally at FNB Stadium in Johannesburg during the party’s 10th anniversary event. Video from the rally showed Malema and supporters chanting “Kill the Boer, the farmer,” while some in the crowd appeared to make gun gestures.
Boers, also known as Afrikaners, are descendants of Dutch and other European settlers in South Africa. Many are farmers, and farm attacks have long been a major point of fear and political tension in the country.
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South Africa has a painful history. Apartheid was real. Its effects were brutal. But past injustice does not justify new racism. It does not justify calling people subhuman. It does not justify chants about killing farmers.
Racism should be rejected every time it shows up. No exceptions. No excuses. That includes racism aimed at white people, black people, or anyone else.
Baloyi’s rant is a reminder that hateful ideas do not disappear just because they come wrapped in political language, pop culture commentary, or fake science. They still need to be called out clearly.