Local musicians Moonchild Sanelly and JazziQ have organised a petition for their song to be played on SABC radio stations.
This after Moonchild, real name Sanelisiwe Twisha, took to social media this week and opened up about the unfairness of radio stations for their refusal to play Askies, two months following its release.
The Weh Mameh hitmaker told Sunday World she realised that her protest would be effective only if she opened up on social media, but did not take a step further to put up a petition for the original version of the song to be played on air.
The petition only needs to be signed by 5 000 fans for the song not to be censored or having the lyrics altered.
“The song has no vulgar, I stand for that. There is nothing I say in that song other than expressing the beauty of various body shapes by describing the body parts,” she said.
“This petition will help radio stations realise that it is not wrong to describe body parts in our own home languages, because I feel like that is the problem. If it was someone else singing in English, then the song would have gone through without experiencing any problems. Something is wrong here.”
The producer of the single, JazziQ, said the song has been misinterpreted as they had no intention of using vulgar but to drag down body-shaming.
He said the message was that women should not be afraid to show off their bodies, but this was not a call for men to pursue women without their consent “and feed into our patriarchal norms”.
“We believe that out song has been taken out of context. We would like to have consultations with broadcasters to understand the criteria used to deem a song not radio compliant. There are far worse rap songs on radio that speak very foul of women and promote violence and substance abuse.”
SABC spokesperson Mmoni Seapolelo said: “The SABC can confirm that the song in question is not banned on SABC’s respective radio stations. In fact, most of our radio stations have not received the song.”
