Lalela Mswane, Black Coffee and Anele Mdoda are some of the Mzansi celebrities who are being dragged for their past association with Israel. Pictures: blackcoffee,zintathu/Instagram
As South Africa’s legal team presented their case against Israel in The Hague, Mzansi social media streets were filled with users dragging local celebs who have previously associated with Israel.
Mzansi’s legal team that stood in the International Court of Justice had South Africans beaming with pride as if the Springboks had just won a tight game by a point, as they took on Israel in the Gaza genocide case.
But while this sense of euphoria was taking place someone on social media thought it right to dig up old evidence of local celebs that have visited the Middle East country or have had any association with it.
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After winning the Miss SA title in 2021 Mswana qualified to compete at a global level in the Miss Universe competition. She faced backlash for this because the Miss Universe pageant was hosted in Israel.
She came third in the competition and was warmly welcomed back home at O.R. Tambo Airport, but there was a handful of protesters at the airport who chanted “Free Palestine” at the damsel. What made the situation worse was that The Department of Sport, Art and Culture withdrew its support for Miss SA after failing to convince the organisation not to compete in the pageant.
“I’ll never comprehend what I did to make people feel justified in their actions. You don’t have to be for me, but you don’t have to be against me,” Mswana told media at the time.
“You don’t have to, certainly, wish death upon me because I made a choice. I never initiated any war. This is way bigger than me. All I did was just pursue a dream of mine.”
Three years later since she took that decision, Mswana was at the receiving end of critics on social media.
But while others were tough on her, other commenters defended her stating that she was only there “for beauty pageant, not politics”.
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Black Coffee, who has been trending for the last two days after being involved in an accident while on flight heading to a gig in Argentina, also faced backlash for his past links with Israel.
In 2018 the Grammy award-winning producer and DJ faced reproach for taking a gig in Tel Aviv, Israel.
The DJ whose real is name Nkosinathi Maphumulo was seen as irresponsible for making this decision.
“South Africa’s isolation and the academic and cultural boycott are part of the reasons apartheid capitulated to the call for freedom. It is morally and politically insensitive for DJ Black Coffee to just go on partying in apartheid Israel, while it kills and oppresses innocent people,” said the Economic Freedom Fighters’ Floyd Shivambu at the time.
Black Coffee said he needed to feed his family. This tweet was pulled up yesterday by netizens who seemignly opted to give the producer soft blows because of his current hospitalisation.
ALSO READ: WATCH LIVE: Israel responds to accusations of genocide at the ICJ
The radio jock was probably the hardest hit by the criticism because she visited Israel in 2016 on a family holiday.
But what made people cringe more towards Anele‘s actions was that her post, which was in May, was shared on Nakba Day.
Nakba Day is an annual day observed on May 15, to commemorate the mass displacement of Palestinians that occurred during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, known as the “Nakba” or “Catastrophe”.
“Israel is beautiful *please do not post your political babble on my page, I am not saying the politics here are pretty I’m saying the land is beautiful, please respect my page and my opinions,” Anele said in 2016.
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