'Xenophobic tweets' costs Babes Wodumo Zim festival gig, as organisers fear for her safety

Xenophobic comments made on Babes Wodumo's Twitter account has resulted in her being dropped from a festival in Zimbabwe

Her comments led to outrage and the festival organisers subsequently fearing for her safety.

Babes made headlines earlier this month when several comments claiming that Nigerians were to blame for the drug scourge in SA and Zimbabweans were stealing RDP houses meant for South Africans were posted on her Twitter account. The account also called for Nigerians to leave SA in a post on Monday.

The Wololo hitmaker has claimed that her account was hacked and told TshisaLIVE that she did not have control of the content being posted on it, but that did not stop social media users from slamming her over the comments.

Babes was booked to headline the Mapopoma Festival at the Victoria Falls Sports Club in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, from 29-31 December 2019; and organisers quickly shared news of the alleged hacking to reassure concertgoers that Babes was not xenophobic.

However, speaking to TshisaLIVE this week, organisers confirmed that the star had been dropped from the festival line-up and her performance cancelled over the tweets.

The festival's founder and operations director, Patrick Mhofu Musonza, said that concertgoers were not convinced by Babes' claims of being hacked and warned her not to set foot in Zimbabwe.

“We wanted Babes to perform but after that tweet, the people who are going to the festival are after her head. Once she arrives in Zimbabwe, her safety is our concern. So it is mainly because of her safety and security concerns (that we have cancelled her performance)."

Angry messages and threats of a protest have also been posted by concertgoers on the festival's social media page. 

“These are all red flags for us. She is claiming to be hacked but people are not buying that. We do not know whether she was hacked or not but if she is claiming she is hacked, we have to believe her.”

He said organisers had been in discussions with Babe's team since the tweets went viral two weeks ago but were unable to come to a resolution.

“They have sent us screenshots of the hackers apparently apologising but who hacks and then apologises?”

Patrick also promised another major act to replace Babes as the headliner and said an announcement would be made soon.

Repeated attempts by TshisaLIVE to contact Babes and her management for comment on the matter were unsuccessful at the time of publishing this article.