IT’S OFFICIAL: GAGA’S COMING TO SA

It’s been confirmed that pop superstar and gay activist Lady Gaga will be putting on two stadium concerts in South Africa later this year.

According to Big Concerts, Gaga will perform her Born This Way Ball tour in Johannesburg at the Soccer City FNB Stadium on Friday 30 November and in Cape Town at the Cape Town Stadium on Monday 3 December.

Tickets for the Johannesburg and Cape Town shows will go on sale online through Computicket.com from 9 a.m. on Tuesday 19 June. Tickets from Computicket outlets and its call centre will be available from 21 June. Ticket prices range from R315 to R715.

The Born This Way Ball tour began on 27 April in Seoul, South Korea and will see the five-time Grammy-winning star appear in Australia and Europe before making her way to South Africa.

The show has been dogged by controversy in Asia, with both conservative Christian and Muslim groups protesting against the singer. The South Korean authorities slapped an 18 age restriction on the performance and, last month, Gaga was forced to cancel her Indonesian show due to security concerns.

“The Haus of Gaga and I have worked for months conceiving a spectacular stage,” said Gaga – dubbed Mother Monster by her fans.

“The Born This Way Ball is an electro-metal pop-opera; the tale of the Beginning, the genesis of the Kingdom of Fame. How we were birthed and how we will die celebrating,” she said.

The Hong Kong Daily News wrote that the show “is effortlessly brilliant in both the visual and musical sense,” the Seoul Daily said that with her “splendid and unprecedented stage, she is the absolute queen of pop!” and the Bangkok Business Newspaper described the concert as a “phenomenon”.

Supporting Gaga for the European and now South African leg of The Born This Way Ball is the newly reformed British rock band The Darkness, best known for their hit I Believe In A Thing Called Love. Gaga’s long-time performance partner and DJ, Lady Starlight, has also been confirmed as a special guest.

Gaga, who has described herself as bisexual, has been a vocal supporter of the LGBT community and same-sex marriage rights and a critic of the bullying of gay teens in the U.S.

She has spoken out about these issues in a meeting with President Obama and at concerts and rallies. Gaga recently launched the Born This Way Foundation to support programs and initiatives to empower young people.

Lady Gaga has sold more than 15 million albums and 90 million singles worldwide. She was named Forbes’ Most Powerful Woman in the World 2011 and was included in Time’s annual ‘The 2010 Time 100’ list of the most influential people in the world.

With over 2.2 billion combined views of all her videos online, Gaga is one of the biggest living people on Facebook with over 52 million ‘likes’ and is number one on Twitter with almost 26 million followers.