The University of Pretoria's student newspaper Perdeby has retracted its story entitled "South Africa's one hit wonders".
The paper caused an upset on Twitter because the story was inaccurate -- most of the people listed were not one-hit wonders. According to the Oxford Dictionary, a one-hit wonder "is a group or singer that has only one hit record before returning to obscurity". This is the apology the paper posted on social media:
Perdeby's list included the names of Idols SA winners Karin Kortje, Jody Williams, Sasha-lee Davids, Anke Pietrangeli and Heinz Winckler. It also had the names of rapper Pitch Black Afro, Afro-Pop group Malaika, kwaito groups Trompies and Bongo Maffin and kwaito stars Zola and Kabelo Mabalane.
People called for the article to be removed, questioning some of the names on the list.
All of these artists had more than one hit record, even though they may not have had equal recognition nationally.
The writer also said multi-award winning Bongo Maffin had a fight because "Stoan [Seate] bashed fellow group member Ntsiki [Mazwai], in an interview with Drum magazine". This is a clear error because Ntsiki was never a member -- her sister Thandiswa was.
This is the apology on the site: "Perdeby retracted this article due to the headline being misleading and the content inaccurate and not what we consider to be newsworthy. We apologise for the mistake. Perdeby strives to provide content that is informative, entertaining and accurate."
People on Twitter were also dissatisfied with the apology.
Wow voetsek to you guys.
— Babes Womzabalazo (@NalediChirwa) August 2, 2017
We're guessing a research training session will be scheduled for the young student writers.
*HuffPost SA has screengrabs of the original story