Cape Town — Popular Congolese Rhumba and Soukous maestro Koffi Olomide who was set to perform at the Shimmy Beach Club in Cape Town on June 30, has had his show cancelled.

Shimmy Beach Club released a statement saying "Please note that Shimmy Beach will no longer be hosting Koffi Olomide. We made the decision to cancel the show last week."

This follows protests and calls by a group known as Stop Koffi Olomide to bar the musician from performing in the country after he was found guilty of statutory rape of one of his former dancers when she was 15. He had been on trial in France for sexually assaulting his dancers between 2002 and 2006. The dancers said they were detained by three men at a villa in Asnieres-sur-Seine, Paris, while Olomide was touring or recording, and had their passports and phones confiscated.

The group said "allowing him to perform in South Africa would undermine the victims, which cannot be tolerated or allowed. South Africa already has a Gender Based Violence crisis and should not be rewarding perpetrators with platforms such as this."

The popular singer is no stranger to controversy as he was declared persona non-grata in 2016 and deported after he kicked one of his female dancers at Jomo Kenyatta Airport in Kenya.

Olomide is also the subject of a judicial process in Zambia, where he was previously barred from entering after he slapped a Rwandan photo-journalist in Lusaka in 2012.