Die Antwoord are prone to polarising opinion, although it appears of late that most here at home have grown tired of them.

Ninja is never shy of expressing his views on South Africa, and it was one of his more recent Instagram posts that pissed many peeps off.

We’ll just look at that post first, because it leads nicely into the stinging letter we all came here to read:

Interesting that he thinks it necessary to go as far back as J.R.R. Tolkien for examples of South African artistic endeavours overseas.

That doesn’t sit well with Tseliso Monaheng, who has done the hard yards on OkayAfrica. Some snippets from that letter below:

Watkin Tudor Jones was a rapper whom I got introduced to via legend…

Waddy was the penultimate “cool” emcee to me. He was to other black kids too, I discovered later on. These were the homies who, like myself, grew up digging for alternative rap music; for anything that wasn’t the shit radio was churning out…

Then he found Ninja.

With Yolandi by his side and the MaxNormal.TV days drawing near, the two formed Die Antwoord…

He featured Isaac Mutant, Garlic Brown, Scallywag and Jaak on “Wie Maak Die Jol Vol,” a song left out of the group’s debut offering, $O$. These, after all, were some of the emcees on the Cape Town rap scene during the gully days when Waddy was the guy who walked around in clubs battling anyone (and oftentimes losing). What transpired following the collab was disconcerting.

Not once did Ninja take any of those emcees he’s featured along on the road; at least there’s no recorded case where that happened.

It’s all good being a self-starter who leeches off of other cultures for selfish interests; capitalism demands it through its every-man-for-himself bullshit approach to life. It’s all good, until we turn to history and identify similar cases where white men have stolen from other cultures and passed off ideas as their own. Where white people use people of other skin tones for self-serving ventures.

So, then, entered the Ninja: Someone who appropriated Cape Flats Coloured identity thoroughly, and went away all smiles and laughter, fat cheque in the back pocket and balls intact in hand. Plus a ticket to the showrooms of big labels and big-name artists and fashion designers, and big-time movie producers…

Here’s the thing, though, Ninja: You’re a superstar now. You pose for photo ops with Kanye and Travis Scott, you get shouted out by Ghostface Killah, you’re bros with Manson, and you can afford to have DJ Muggs, the founding member of a crew which was so influential to your early years, to spin at the record release party for your mixtape, which he produced. But for you to suggest in your Instagram post that South Africans “over the age 20 (or so) are culturally insecure and unable to present anything artistically that is relevant to the outside world” and then go on to list an almost exclusively-white, way-over-20 list (with one dead person in it, as one Facebook commenter pointed out), c’mon fam.

Or, as one of the captions on the memes you’ve posted on your group’s Facebook page suggests: “Don’t be a poes.”

Apparently it’s not just photo ops with Kanye, it’s also anal sex and bananas (HERE).

Anyway, I think this is where someone *drops mic* and moonwalks the hell out of here.

[source:okayafrica]