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Can celebs still demand “privacy” when they air their dirty laundry on social media?

Cape Town – On Friday local rapper AKA took to Twitter to lash out at his former bae, DJ Zinhle.

For almost the entire day the 28-year-old sent out one shocking tweet after another aimed directly at the mother of his daughter. (Read more about that here)

The airing of his dirty laundry on Twitter according to him happened because his ex was wearing a T-shirt with the word “#Nonke” printed on it. (Read more on that here)

The #Nonke-shirts refers to a social media rant in which DJ Euphonik degraded his ex-girlfriend Bonang Matheba. His rant was a sexist mess with the main purpose to embarrass Bonang. (Read more on that here)

Bonang is currently dating AKA.

It’s safe to say that Zinhle’s T-shirt stunt was 100% aimed at Bonang and AKA’s relationship and knowing that AKA has a short temper (we’ve seen him lash out many times before), the Twitter meltdown was inevitable.

AKA’s rant lasted a day and by Friday night Zinhle had fired back. (Read more about that here)

Social media is a very public platform

The very public platform on which the interactions took place made it the stuff of memes come true and the media understandably had a field day giving blow-by-blow coverage. AKA at one point even told the media to take the tweets and make it news.

Of course it made headlines because trending topics in the time of online media simply can’t be ignored. (Read more on that here)

AKA always demands privacy from the media. He once famously walked out of an interview when a journalist dared to ask about his relationship with Bonang.

But can these local stars demand privacy and dodge the media when they so easily share their victories and fails so publicly? Of course they can! But what does that say about censoring the media?

During a recent press conference AKA refused to answer a journalist’s question because she was from a publication that had written something about him that he didn’t like. What kind of message are we sending out when stars want to control what the media write and ban them when they dare step out of the celeb’s comfort zone?

AKA, if you want your privacy we’ll gladly oblige. But don’t hold a carrot in front of our noses and expect us not to bite. (And for as long as these stories are being read - the media will write about it.)

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