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Mos Def allowed to leave South Africa after apologising to government
By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 23 November 2016
Mos Def has been allowed to leave South Africa, nearly a year after he was arrested and charged with breaking the country’s immigration laws.
As previously reported, the rapper, real name Yasiin Bey, has lived in South Africa since 2013. He was arrested in January this year when he attempted to travel to Ethiopia using a World Passport. Although not-for-profit organisation the World Service Authority has been issuing these since 1954, most countries do not recognise them as valid travel documents.
The court case surrounding this rumbled on for the rest of the year, but came to an end yesterday when he agreed to issue an apology to the South African government.
“Bey has unreservedly apologised to the government of South Africa and more particularly to the Department Of Home Affairs for his actions and for any inconvenience and/or prejudice this may have caused”, said the country’s Department Of Home Affairs in a statement. “The department is satisfied with the apology”.
Bey had also applied for and received a US passport, on which he travelled out of the country yesterday, the statement added. Charges against him will be officially dropped on Friday, at which point he will be “declared an undesirable person” and therefore not allowed to re-enter South Africa.
Upon his return to the US, Bey yesterday announced a series of farewell shows pre-empting his retirement from music. He will appear at New York’s Apollo Theatre on 21 Dec, then at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall from 31 Dec to 2 Jan. He also has two UK shows scheduled for later in January. It is not clear if these will now go ahead.
Following the shows, Rolling Stone reports that he will relocate again to Africa, focussing on his art, culture and lifestyle collective A Country Called Earth.
