Having made a career out of speaking his mind Gareth Cliff wasn’t holding back following the controversy that has engulfed him this week. You know, the tweet he sent out that has caused M-Net to reconsider working with him in the future.

Cliff chose to speak to News24 to give his side of the story, defending himself whilst at the same time condemning racism:

“I am very disappointed how this agenda has been hijacked by an angry mob on Twitter,” he said.

Asked to give his comment on what was behind these sporadic race debates, Cliff said: “I think this is an ugly situation. It’s a conversation we absolutely need to have, but I believe it has gotten out of control. It’s not everybody in SA. It’s everybody on social media.”

“It’s a lot of hot-headed people who are very emotional. And when you are emotional you sometimes say things you don’t mean and I can vouch for that, having been on radio for so long,” he said…

“Anyone… who has been listening to me for the last 16 years would pretty much know where I stand and I do not have any support for Penny Sparrow. It irritates me that I have been conflated into an argument with a whole bunch of other people that I didn’t start and I wasn’t joining the wrong side of,” he said.”I worked with M-Net for over ten years and suddenly people are calling on them to boycott me, as if I have been hiding some kind of latent, nasty personality for all of these shows.””Idols is a talent show about brilliant people in South Africa who deserve a stage and platform for their talent. The fact that a bunch of lunatics of Twitter are starting to make this about them! How dare they,” he said.Cliff said while the freedom of speech issue was one that the nation needed to discuss, it was perhaps too soon to do start doing so now.”I think my timing was off. The important thing here is that I did not say anything racist and I was not supporting anyone racist,” he said.