The Sunday News
Bruce Ndlovu
WHILE some night think life as one of Zimbabwe’s most loved and treasured songbirds is all glitz and glamour, Ammara Brown is living proof that this is not always the case as she once almost had her clothes ripped from her body by rowdy fans.
The life of female performers is not easy, and Ammara Brown came face to face with the harsh realities of being one of Zimbabwe’s most sought after female stars when a rowdy crowd laid its abusive hands on her while she was on the way to the stage. The episode occurred during last year’s Chibuku Road to Fame finals.
The songbird got more than she bargained for when she walked through a crowd without adequate security at the Glamis Arena.
“Usually there’ll have the stage on a certain side and there’s the artistes’ entrance. I got there and when I got to the usual entrance the policeman recognised me and he was like Ammara come inside, come inside.
“As I walked in I was like, no wait, there’s the VIP entrance right there but the stage is like on the other side of the field. So the security, I don’t know if he was feeling excited or was just feeling like I’ve got Ammara so I’m going to help her out, which was beautiful blessed be, but in my mind I’m seeing thousands of people and surely there’s another entrance and he’s about to take me that route,” she told fans during a live broadcast on Facebook last Friday morning.
When she realised that the security was about to take her through the crowd, that’s when reality dawned on her. In the blink of an eye, abusive strangers were all over her, groping and touching her.
“He walks me through the VIP area and go down those staircase and hey . . . the entry point that he takes me to is basically through the audience and I’m like maiwe what’s going to happen today because he’s one man.
We start walking through and obviously people are facing the other direction because that’s where the stage is and I’m like maybe I can get through but I sold myself dreams because in a minute, not even a minute because a minute is too long, but in a few seconds one person was like Ammara Brown . . . before I knew it there was this like a swarm of men around me . . . it was just havoc. All of a sudden all kinds of strangers started groping me and grabbing me in like the worst way,” she said.
The reality of what had just happened to her would only become apparent after security and some kind hearted members of the audience had managed to win the tug of war with the unruly crowd.
“I was so traumatised and I was being pulled this way and that way and I’m screaming and I’m fighting and I’m so scared. Like literally my clothes were going to be ripped apart, that’s how bad it was. I remember this monya hit someone and he flew a metre. It was bad and they literally carried me over the bars by the stage and I came out of there shaking and in three seconds I realised what had happened and I cried my eyes out,” she said.
Ammara counts that episode as one of the worst in her life.
“I had never been so disrespected. I had never been so humiliated and scared. Scared, scared, scared. (I was) scared for my life, scared for my body and scared just for my peace. That for me was horrible on two levels because aside from just being molested in public and I’m grateful I had those men who stood up for me because there are those of you who will not stand a woman being abused in that way in public and so recklessly . . . ,” she said.
