AKA wants Burna Boy to apologise: You say you're an African giant, prove it

With just more than a week to go until Burna Boy performs in SA, the Nigerian star has once again come under fire for comments he made about the country, and AKA is still waiting for that apology.

In a series of tweets in September, Burna Boy urged black foreigners living in SA to defend and protect themselves against xenophobic attacks. In a now deleted tweet, he also told  AKA to beef up his security, before giving him the middle finger.

He promised to never set foot in SA again until the government “wakes the f*ck up and  really performs a miracle”. However, a month later, he was announced as part of the Africans Unite line-up to “unify all Africans and speak out against femicide”. The event takes place in Pretoria on November 24.

As artists and event organisers, under the umbrella of Tshwane Entertainment Collective, this week slammed Burna Boy's inclusion on the line-up, AKA took to Twitter to ask him to apologise.

Burna Boy has yet to respond to the request.

The Fela in Versace star said SA took Burna Boy in “before he reached these levels” and challenged the Naija star to prove he is an “African giant” by apologising.

“Ek se ... Burna Boy. All we want is an apology. We know SA is not perfect, but we took you in as our own before you reached these levels. You say you are an AFRICAN GIANT, prove it,” he wrote.

AKA said he was willing to swallow his pride and asked if Burna Boy was willing to do the same.

The SA rapper said he reached out to Burna Boy because he was older and wanted to make sure no harm came to either of them if they visited the other's country.

AKA has previously said he will not apologise for his part in a Twitter exchange with Nigerian artists at the time of the xenophobic attacks.

He repeated his stance on Wednesday.

“Woah. I’m not apologising for anything brother. I did nothing wrong,” he told a follower.

Tshwane Entertainment Collective penned a scathing open letter to sport, arts and culture minister Nathi Mthethwa this week, raising objections about the concert and calling on the department to pull its sponsorship of the event.

The chief concern was Burna Boy's inclusion. The group labelled the event a “financial exercise to benefit the very artists who have our country in a negative light based on false claims”.

“Whoever may have deemed that the country needs a PR exercise of this nature would have done so largely as a result of the callous, misleading and unwarranted incitement by this very artist. Not only did he spread falsehoods through his extensive platform, he literally incited violence and hate,” the letter said of Burna Boy, suggesting that government had succumbed to pressure from him.

The department has distanced itself from the concert, saying it was not funding the event and its logo was used erroneously on promotional material for the show.

Africans Unite organiser Kenneth Chicco told TshisaLIVE that all communications announcing the concert were done with the inclusion of the department and while it was not funding the event, its partner, Phambili Media, “had reached out to the department for an endorsement to stand behind the messaging of the event”.

Meanwhile, social media was flooded with memes and messages slamming the decision to bring Burna Boy to SA.