Ntsiki Mazwai wants to know why people think she’s dirty

Poet Ntsiki Mazwai finally took to Twitter on Friday to address all the jokes about her supposedly being “Ntsila” (Dirty) Mazwai.

She pointed out that the Roast of Somizi last week had been preoccupied with jokes about her supposedly being dirty, and, while the was at pains to say that she didn’t take it at all seriously, she was honestly wondering where the joke had even come from.

She asked her followers to help her “unpack” the question.

“Do people say I’m dirty because I don’t wear make up or because they are body/looks shaming me? I been trying to figure this out for YEARS.”

It immediately unleashed a wave of reaction, with many saying that the trend of calling her dirty was started by DJ Euphonik years ago.

Somizi Mhlongo himself, in building up to his Roast last Thursday, had also gone to great lengths to make jokes about Ntsiki being “dirty”.

He told The Citizen in an interview that she hadn’t had a bath in a long time, to which Mazwai has now responded that she does in fact regularly bath and shower.

Somizi said that, at his Roast, with “Ntsiki it’s gonna be personal”.

“I want to roast her and circumcise her with everything that I have. Because Ntsiki … she just blabbers … and offends people. And she thinks this world is … she can just wake up and say s**t about people. And it’s okay.

“She has a bad way of looking for attention. So this is a way to speak my heart as well.

“Unfortunately with Ntsiki, I think she’s thicker-skinned than most of us … and not thick-skinned because she’s thick skinned. She’s thick-skinned because she hasn’t taken a bath in a long time.

“So her skin is so thick of … i’ntsila [dirt]. So … they must call her Ntsila Mazwai.”

Mazwai said that a great deal of the “comedy” content at Somizi’s Roast centred on this theme too, and she wanted to understand it so she could “also laugh”.

She denied that it bothered her; just that there didn’t seem to be much logic behind it.

Her followers started weighing in with their views and theories about it, much of which she retweeted.