Ntsiki Mazwai upset with Lasizwe’s disrespect on national TV

by Sergio Miller

Following her recent appearance on Newzroom Afrika, a well-known poet, and black consciousness activist Ntsiki Mazwai has expressed great dissatisfaction at Lasizwe’s disrespect on national television. 

The pair were part of three panellists invited to appear on the news channel. In the interview the anchor Iman Rappetti spoke to actress Bhumi Mhlongo, the poet Ntsiki Mazwai as well as content creator and TV host Lasizwe Dambuza about the impact of “influencers” in modern South Africa. 

Later the panelists were each asked about how they used their influence to impact public opinion to contribute to building our country’s democracy considering the upcoming national elections. 

When asked whether they consider themselves to be influencers, Ntsiki responded saying: “Absolutely not.”  

Elaborating on her response she added: “I’m an artist, I’m a producer, I have a craft. So, I think that it’s a little bit scary to say that influencers are the ones who should be influencing the voters because we do not necessarily have an ‘influencer stream’ per se.” 

She revealed that it is frightening to think that the internet has so much power these days but emphasised that one’s impact should not be about the votes but about understanding the history and politics of our country at a time like this. 

Lasizwe gave his opinion and in the process dismissed Ntsiki’s notion that influencers don’t have power, highlighting how he believes influencers can have both a negative and positive impact on those who follow them. 

“I was listening to Ntsiki and thinking girl what are you saying? I think influencers do have power. I do consider myself an influencer and when you are an influencer you need to feed information that is given to us by the news. It’s up to you what you want to do with that news to your audience.”

Taking to social media, Ntsiki made it clear that she was not happy with Lasizwe criticising every comment she made throughout the interview that put her in a bad light, while he had no proper knowledge about what’s happening in the world. 

In a post on X (an app formerly known as Twitter), she posted: 

Later another user asked her to forgive him, to which she responded: 

Meanwhile, many of her followers stood in agreement with her sentiments.

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