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Simphiwe Dana opens up about the hurt

Johannesburg – To the world, musician Simphiwe Dana may seem like a no-nonsense warrior of social and civic rights.

But beneath all the political talk and debates, Simphiwe reveals she has a sensitive soul.

"I’ve found that I tend to blame myself for other people’s mistakes. That’s something that I have to deal with,” she told Gareth Cliff during an interview on his platform CliffCentral this week.

“I tend to give people a very long rope, perhaps too long a rope," she says. "I always get hurt and then what happens is people feel comfortable when you are the person who is blaming themselves, even when they are wrong,” she adds.

Simphiwe says she is working to eradicate this, but it is a problem that dates back to her childhood.

“When I was a child I would collect stray animals and try fix them. I like to fix people,” she says.

And even though she occasionally finds herself in the midst of heated social media Twars and debates (like her most recent one with Ntsiki Mazwai here), Simphiwe says she is sensitive as an artist and she has often cried over hurtful things that people have said and done to her.

“I believe it comes with the territory. There’s points in my life where I wish I could write music without the fame. Where I could just write without people reaching me and they could just enjoy the music,” she says “I wish I didn’t feel so strongly about social injustice…I wish I could just write music.” 

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