Kirstenbosch’s popular Summer Sunset Concerts have booked The Kiffness for 28 December, but the listing has prompted public protests and an urgent call for organisers to withdraw the musician from the programme, reports Cape {town} Etc.
SANBI’s concert schedule shows The Kiffness on the bill for the late-December show.
About 100 people, many wearing keffiyehs and carrying Palestinian flags, gathered outside the South African National Biodiversity Institute offices this week to demand the booking be cancelled.
Protesters told officials that hosting the musician would normalise racism and Islamophobia.
‘We are telling SANBI, please, don’t allow such a person to perform at Kirstenbosch because you normalise racism[…]and the attacks that have been directed to South Africa,’ said Usuf Chikte of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, reports Constantiaberg Bulletin.
Mothers4Gaza and other groups accused The Kiffness of spreading harmful narratives online. ‘Elders who fought for our democracy sat with us today in peaceful resistance under the trees of Kirstenbosch,’ they wrote on Instagram.
The protesters allege that his statements smear humanitarian leaders and undermine constitutional values.
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According to Elitsha the Palestine Solidarity Campaign says it has formally asked SANBI to reconsider the booking. SANBI has acknowledged receipt of correspondence and asked for time to respond, organisers said.
In response to comedian and ventriloquist Chester Missing’s post that called him an ‘apartheid denying bigots’, The Kiffness explained that he never denied apartheid but always said it was a terrible system.
The Kiffness has previously courted controversy over public remarks on Gaza and South African politics, which critics say fuel division.
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Picture: Dereck Green / Gallo Images
