Some of us were gearing up for a Burna Boy set this weekend at the FNB Stadium.
Alas that seems like it won’t be happening as the concert organisers announced on Tuesday that Burna’s visit has been postponed, allegedly due to low ticket sales.
Filling up a stadium that is as large as Soccer City is not an easy feat. It also didn’t seem like a stretch till rumours of Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates tickets being sold with free Burna Boy tickets attached to these purchases, started surfacing.
The news of this was met with joy by fans of the Megacy, the collective noun for fans of local rapper AKA. It is not a secret that Burna Boy and AKA enjoyed a collaborative run that did wonders for both their careers, but resentments have surfaced because of how that came to an end.
Regardless Burna Boy is a Grammy Award winning artist with a current number one album in the UK which happens to be the first time an African artist has done this.
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It is understandable that maybe you have inherited the beef from the AKA days but really, things verging on xenophobia is unwarranted. People flock to Taylor Swift and One Direction but an act from Nigeria with massive global appeal and recognition is not something we can get behind.
Burna Boy postponing his show doesn’t sit well with me, I wanted him to perform in an empty stadium ??
— Pfarelo (@PfareloMulondo) September 19, 2023
Burna Boy’s concert at the FNB Stadium, Johannesburg South Africa has been postponed to 16th of Dec due to low ticket sales. Burna Boy has only sold out 1500 tickets out of 90,000 but does Burna Boy know what South Africans are always doing on 16th Dec every year? pic.twitter.com/GotTZDKakz
— Man’s NOT Barry Roux (@AdvoBarryRoux) September 20, 2023
There was also a grave mistake made by the organisers of this performance.
There is the issue of a festival that has been around for the better part of a decade that is happening on the same day as the Burna Boy concert was intended. This idea of trying to coax or steal fans from one festival to have them attend another one is never going to work if people have never experienced the newer platform of the two not to mention DStv Delicious has four international headliners and not just one.
It is more than just a bit murky as the promoters’ social media pages have also disappeared. It is hard to say whether Burna Boy will even look to make this right by scheduling another date. It can’t be easy with so many of his fellow Africans claiming that he doesn’t have the talent or star power to fill a local stadium or that the hatred for him is at such a fever pitch.
People are also offering up Cassper Nyovest as an example of how to go about filling up large venues but even though he said his attempt was a success, there are questions of validity around that claim.
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Either way, it looks like we may have to wait to see Burna Boy again and even then, I’m not sure why he would come after the barrage of hatred he has experienced at the hands of South African fans.
