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Langalakhe Mabena
Many saw it as an act of non-tolerance as fans and rains destroyed musical instruments, but, the only surviving founding member of South Africa Mbaqanga Kings, Soul Brothers’ Moses Ngwenya, believes Bulawayo fans’ actions on that night were done out of love.
Speaking as a guest at the legendary David Mashabela podcast, Dr Black Moses as Ngwenya is affectionately known, recalled the violent scenes that occurred during one of their yesteryear performance in the city of Kings.
The show was at White City Stadium in 1991.
Despite such scenes, Ngwenya said from the places they have performed — Bulawayo is the best as they always received genuine love from their fans.
“People love us all over the world but Bulawayo in Zimbabwe is number one. There was one time when we performed in Bulawayo and in the middle of the show the rains started falling while we were still doing our set. The stage had no cover (roof) to protect the instruments and even us as performers.
“People started a riot that destroyed our instruments and the entire stage set until the organisers called soldiers for backup. People don’t understand these things, it was raining and they wanted us on stage. Imagine people paid to be inside and we gave them so much fun and to them, it did not make any sense for our set to just stop. We came out of the stage running like rats there because there was a lot of violence.
“Once things got settled, we then realised that the action was based on love and not that they wanted to hurt us. To solve the fracas, the promoter communicated with our fans that we would return to Bulawayo for a compensatory show and we pegged the tickets at a half-price. The second show was again sold out,” said Ngwenya, defending their local fans.
In a lengthy interview, Ngwenya said he misses the late David Masondo because he was more of a twin brother to him.
“Look at this (photo album), these are all great pictures and hit songs too because when we went to the studio to record we meant serious business. These are the great old days we used to gel our hair and most of them (pictures) I took with David.
“I have managed to re-group and mobilise the young guys I work with but things are not the same. I miss David every time we perform because he was more of my twin. Now when we perform I have to monitor a lot of things, especially on the vocals, duties that were done by Masondo. His work ethic can’t be matched because he was a star. He is the man who penned almost all of our songs and they were mostly written on our life experiences and that shows the genius he was,” said Ngwenya.
Dr Moses also revealed that with his new troops, Soul Brothers released an album titled Hamba Naye which was launched on 1 December last year, under Gallo Records. The album is the third project the group has done after the death of lead singer Masondo in 2015. The 12-track album has songs such as Utshwala, Usile, Ukhuluma Kanjani?, Uthando Lwethu, Vuka Ndoda as well as the trademark song Hamba Naye.
Online Reporter