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RIVALRY between Mabala Noise and Afrotainment took a nasty turn this week.

This after social media attacked Mabala Noise artists’ manager Thobela Dlamini and accused him of corrupting the South African Music Awards (Samas).

The attack came after the Samas 23 nominees announcement, which revealed that Nasty C was leading with seven nominations. A week later, two of Nasty C’s nominees were disqualified. Thobela blamed Afrotainment boss, DJ Tira, for instigating a social media attack on him.

Thobela said those who attacked him were Afrotainment employees, including Ngane and Oros. He said: “I worked with Afrotainment for many years and it was never a problem to be a member of the Recording Industry of South Africa while working for them. But now, they go around claiming I’m corrupting the Samas. I didn’t want to respond to the claims, but now I’m forced to address certain people and educate them on how we work.

There are those who are bitter and want to portray me as pushing the Mabala agenda.”The only thing that happened on the disqualification of Nasty C was that there was an oversight from both parties,” he said.

Dlamini said by the virtue of being the deputy chairperson of RiSA, he is automatically the chairperson of the Samas.

Thobela said the disqualified videos were submitted on time, but lacked play time. He said: “I was surprised when Tira retweeted the attack and his employees were part of it.This told me he agreed with what was said in the tweets.”

DJ Tira denied retweeting any attack on Thobela, and said: “But I know there are those who are unhappy. Maybe Duncan is unhappy because he wasn’t nominated.

Ngane is the one who’s been posting.”

Ngane said: he doesn’t know what Thobela is talking about. “I won’t entertain him.” Oros and Duncan were not available for comment.

He said the only thing he said after the disqualification of the artist was that they should maybe nominate Duncan. “But personally I never attacked Thobela or Mabala Noise directly or indirectly,” he said.

—Dailysun.