SA celebs best and worst responses to the country’s unrest

The past week has been very heavy for many citizens in South Africa and as we watched parts of the country burn, celebs had more to say than we expected.

As people sought leadership in their politicians, the next best thing was the impassioned speeches and statements from some of your “favs”: comments from celebrities to allay people’s fears, calls for prayer and change. These figures hoped their opinions would be heard and taken seriously.

But unfortunately, like many musicians and actors who express their shock and disbelief at the chaos in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng, some were completely unaware of how their words were out of touch.

From Duduzane Zuma’s “loot carefully”, “let them loot” and some positive words, we run them down.

Best and worst things celebs said this week

While SA burns let me ‘escape the madness’ in our holiday home – Ayanda Thabethe

The TV presenter hasn’t necessarily won this week at all, from stating she wouldn’t comment on the looting because it would financially damage her brand, Thabethe’s comments on Thursday just left us gobsmacked.

In a now a deleted tweet, Thabethe said: “Grateful to be in a privileged opportunity to escape the madness to our holiday home.”

Take a look:

As you can imagine, Thabethe’s tone-deaf comments weren’t well received on Twitter, as tweeps said she was “shoving her privilege” in the faces of the poor.

Let’s clean and rebuild our communities – Kabelo Mabalane

This is one of the best ones. As many celebrities were all talk, Mabalane is on the ground and helping affected communities in Soweto, in hopes to rebuild and clean up after they were affected by the looting and destruction

The kwaito star posted videos on his Instagram account, imploring people to help clean up Jabulani Mall on Friday morning.

“The community there is in high spirits in the sense that everybody wants to get to the other side of this and clean up.”

‘Let them steal, let them loot‘ – Jub Jub

Moja Love host, Molemo ‘Jub Jub’ Maarohanye – of popular TV show Uyajola 9/9 – made an impassioned speech earlier this week, calling out his fellow colleagues for their silence and thinking they are “clever blacks” for disregarding the looting.

Some praised the media personality for being aware of socio-economic issues that eventually influenced the protests.

“Let them steal if they have to steal, let them do whatever because the government has not provided that.”

Despite his businesses being affected by vandalism, his stance angered people, with some suggesting Jub Jub wouldn’t be saying this if the Moja Love building and studios was burnt down.

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Please drop suggestions and resources – Rachel Kolisi

The wife of Springbok captain Siya Kolisi, Rachel, was honest in her reflections over to how she could play a role. She admitted that her family was going through a tough time and wasn’t in the “right head space” to put forward suggestions to assist the situation.

Instead, she asked people to give ideas on how to provide a helping hand and name organisations that were assisting communities.

“I have seen that there are some amazing organisations that are helping to clean up, people and organisations that are helping with essential deliveries… I will share that information as much as I can to my pages.”