HARARE – Singer Ammara Brown has been dragged on Twitter, accused of not having time for her fans.
The row was triggered by a fan who tweeted that Amarra “treated me like shit” after she refused to have a selfie taken with her in November 2017 during a military-led anti-Robert Mugabe march in Harare.
The fan’s original post appeared on a thread started by socialite Yvonne Maphosa, who had asked her followers: “Have you met a celebrity before? What was your reaction? I’m always over-excited.”
Using the name Mukunda, the fan tweeted that she went over to the star and said: “Hi Ammara, good to see you here. May I have a selfie please?”
Ammara “waved me away”, she remembers, as if to say “get away from me, leave”.
“Next moment she was taking pictures with slay queens,” the fan protested, adding that she still held a “grudge”.
Ammara was not apologetic, however, insisting that she feared being “molested” – which has happened before.
“I denied 95 percent of selfies that day as there were thousands of people, and I had no security. I’m not sorry,” she fired back.
When another fan told her that she could have ignored Mukunda’s tweet, she replied: “Sometimes people need to be reminded that: I am a human being. I have been molested in public before while WITH security. Ten men can’t hold 1,000. Some days it is impossible to meet the fan halfway. Saying yes to one means 10, 50 or 100 behind them. Must my safety be compromised?”
The 31-year-old singer’s responses sparked a Twitter hashtag, #AmmaraSecurityChallenge.
Fans blasted the star for “lacking humility”, being “arrogant” and “rude”.
One fan wrote back: “People may forget what you say to them but they never forget how you make them FEEL. If you had paid attention to the details of that tweet, she (Mukunda) is really talking about how you made her FEEL on that day! You made her feel worthless and took selfies with a superior group of people.”
“I’m a huge fan of Ammara Brown but I’m really disappointed by her rudeness towards her fans, humility goes a long way and fans matter too,” wrote @RealTalkFadzie.
Another fan blasted: “The issue isn’t you trying to stay safe, it’s making another human being feel small. Imagine it’s years later and she still remembers that bad feeling, you could have explained the circumstances AND apologised. Or even kept quiet really. Now you’re just being mean for no reason.”
Not everyone thought she had done wrong though.
“You guys are so entitled wow,” tweeted another fan. “She literally doesn’t owe you a ‘hi’ if she doesn’t feel like it.”
Ammara, the daughter of music legend Andy Brown, is famous for hits such as Kiliz and Mukoko, the latter a collaboration with Tytan.