Die Antwoord respond to "hate crime" video

The video, which was recorded at Future Music Festival in Adelaide back in 2012, was originally uploaded by Die Antwoord's ex-videographer Ben Crossman earlier this month, and has since been taken down and reposted multiple times.

In the clip, Die Antwoord's Ninja is seen running up to Andy Butler of Hercules and Love Affair, before spitting in his face and mocking him. As Butler makes an exit after throwing a drink at Ninja, Die Antwoord's Yolandi Visser shouts, "Run, fa**ot, run! Run for your life bitch."

Crossman's video resulted in the South African band being removed from two festival lineups.

Yesterday (18 August), Ninja of Die Antwoord responded to the video in a lengthy Facebook post, writing, "Ben has cleverly edited this video clip to make it seem like me and ¥o-landi commited a hate crime towards a person because they are gay. However Ben beat up the guy from Hercules himself while filming this same video clip. This was just a fight with someone who fucked with us. Not a hate crime. This fight had nothing to with the fact that this guy was gay. We dont care about people’s sexual preference. Our DJ and best friend DJ HITEK is gay, and alot of people in our crew are gay. But if a person (no matter what their sexual preference it) keeps harrassing us over and over, then physically harrasses ¥o-landi, there will obviously be repercussion."

Writing about the incident, Ninja added, "At the end of the tour, during our final festival in Adelaide, the guy from Hercules followed ¥o-landi into the girls bathroom and wouldn’t let her out, and she had to physically push past him to get out of the bathroom. She then ran to me and (our camera man) Ben and told us what just happened. This is why we all got up and ran after this guy (which Ben has not included in his edit). As I ran up to the guy from Hercules, he threw a drink at me and punched me so I hit him back, and he ran off. Ben (our camera man) then chased the guy and got into a scuff with him. During this scuff Ben punched the guy from Hercules in the face. The guy then ran away screaming for security to arrest us. In the heat of the moment I quickly told ¥o-landi to be as dramatic as possible about what happened so that we wouldn’t be detained for this guys bullshit story he was busy spinning to security. The festival asked us if we wanted to press charges against the guy and we said no, as the incident was now over."