South African rap/rave group Die Antwoord has been dropped from two festival line-ups following a video that has emerged, which appears to show rapper Ninja assaulting Andy Butler of the band Hercules and Love Affair, vocalist Yolandi calling him a “f*ggot”, and the pair falsely accusing him of sexual assault.
The video, which can be seen on SA blog Watkykjy, was filmed by the band’s former videographer Ben Crossman, who has since fallen out with the group. It was taken backstage at the 2012 Future Music festival in Adelaide, Australia.
In it, Ninja – real name Watkin Tudor Jones – can be seen running towards Butler and apparently attacking him while Yolandi – real name Anri du Toit – shouts the homophobic slur. Later in the video, Ninja can be heard instructing Yolandi to tell people that Butler, who incidentally is gay, sexually assaulted her in a portable toilet. Yolandi can then be seen feigning tears as she tells various people this story, in what Ninja can be heard describing as an “Oscar-winning performance” at one point.
As a result, the group has reportedly been dropped by two upcoming US music festivals, the Louder Than Life festival in Louisville and the Life Is Beautiful Music and Art Festival in Las Vegas.
In a response on Facebook, Ninja said the video had been “cleverly edited” to look like a hate crime by Crossman, who he says “has been on a rampage to make us look bad in the media because we fired him years ago for being mentally unstable and malicious towards our family”.
Crossman told The Citizen that this was a lie: “I’m not actually that shocked but Ninja would rather lie and try and paint me as a crazy person than own up to his wrongdoing.”
According to Ninja’s statement, which can be read in full here: “This was just a fight with someone who f*cked with us. Not a hate crime.”
WATCH: Die Antwoord in storm over k-word, n-bombs, calling Whitney Houston ‘crack whore bitch’
In Ninja’s version of events, Butler had harassed him and Yolandi for days leading up to the incident. In the post, he describes this alleged harassment in detail. He also denies any homophobia was involved.
“This fight had nothing to with the fact that this guy was gay. We don’t care about people’s sexual preference. Our DJ and best friend DJ HITEK is gay, and a lot of people in our crew are gay.
“But if a person (no matter what their sexual preference is) keeps harassing us over and over, then physically harasses ¥o-landi, there will obviously be repercussions.”
The rapper accuses Crossman of having “beat up the guy from Hercules himself while filming this same video clip,” a claim Crossman also dismisses as a lie.
“Ninja absolutely flabbergasts me with his consistent lying. He says the clip is edited and doctored, it’s an unedited three-and-a-half-minute-long clip. It’s unedited, fact,” said Crossman on Whatsapp.
Crossman also said he did not hit Andy Butler, adding that Butler himself would corroborate this. He also said that a festival manager had told him that he was willing to go on record that Yolandi lied to him about Andy Butler having sexually assaulted her and would be interviewed in an upcoming YouTube video on Edwin’s Generation, on which US vlogger Edwin Costa has published several videos critical of Die Antwoord.
Andy Butler has not responded to requests for comment.
Die Antwoord has faced a string of damning allegations recently, the most serious of which is that Ninja allegedly sexually abused Australian rapper Zheani and also distributed “revenge porn” photographs of her performing oral sex on him to members of the cast and crew of the movie Chappie. These claims first emerged in a diss track released by Zheani.
A recent clip also shows Ninja and Yolandi using the racial slur “n****r” multiple times, calling late R&B singer Whitney Houston a “crack whore bitch” on the night of her death, and calling a member of the audience a “swart naai” (“black f**k”) while onstage.
NOTE: The video has been removed from YouTube, but can be seen here.
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