The Sunday News
Peter Matika, Senior Reporter
HE was known as one of the Zimbabwean arts industry’s “expendables” . . . his wit, and energetic charisma on stage always mesmerised the crowd.
Tawanda Moyo, warmly known as MaPecca was one of Siyaya Arts Group and perhaps the arts industry’s most prized assets.
With a head full of dreadlocks, he was a living legend, an arts icon, the artiste everyone wanted to associate with, the artiste they wanted to be.
A well-travelled and seasoned artiste, MaPecca was revered by the community. He was the man who turned himself into a renowned artiste from ashes.
MaPecca, with Siyaya travelled the world, getting to perform at the world’s best venues. Constantly on the road, with his friends or brothers rather, MaPecca felt he needed more than just a life of entertaining masses, he sought to settle down.
Women’s knees always jellied in his presence, they always melted whenever they saw his smile.
As if fate had heard his silent whispers, Cupid struck him with his love’s arrow and he married a woman, whom he believed would love him till the end of time.
But alas the sisters of fate, with their enchanted tapestry and all seeing eye, wove a different path with their shrivelled fingers for MaPecca and his wife Jacqueline Chesigelenaso (Banda) Moyo.
Married for more than a decade and with three children, the union has evidently collapsed, with mention of last week’s incident, where MaPecca was shot and hospitalised by his alleged wife’s lover Oricious “Oros” Moyo, a well-known malayitsha who owns and runs a fast food outlet in the city.
With a shaven head and a face full of hair, MaPecca has been living in the shadow of his past. He left the arts industry to take on a life of full time ministry, a move, which left many of his friends and the arts sector perplexed.
Not straying too far from last week’s story, perhaps these were signs of his silent plea to try and save his marriage.
MaPecca suspected his wife was having an affair and decided to investigate.
He said on the night he was shot, he trailed his wife from work, where she is ironically employed by her alleged lover.
He said he followed her to where she met with her alleged lover in Emakhandeni suburb, where they then drove to his house in Emganwini.
Reiterating the series of events as they unfolded he said the day before he caught them his quest was unsuccessful, as he lost track of her in traffic along the way.
“On Monday I tried to tail her but lost her along the way. It was then on Tuesday that fate would have it that I came face to face with the man I believed to be just her employer. She got off work between 9.30pm and 10pm and got a ride from one of her workmates husband’s car. They dropped her off at 6th Avenue, where I then assumed she would catch a kombi home to Gwabalanda but no, she got into a Cowdray Park suburb bound kombi. She dropped off in Emakhandeni near the cricket club and got into a small vehicle . . . a Vista. I, in the company of a friend in a vehicle we had hired to tail them, and then followed the car to Emganwini, where I was shot,” said MaPecca.
He said once the vehicle in which his wife and alleged lover drew to a stop by the house, he asked his friends to park at a safe location and took it upon himself to confront them.
“I don’t want to lie, I was agitated and my nerves were wrecking me. I needed some sort of closure and this was it. I walked up to the car on the passenger side, where my wife was seated. I knocked on the window, which she didn’t open, then I decided to open the rear passenger door. There I then asked him (Oricious) what he was doing with my wife. I turned the question to my wife as well and they were both mum.
“Needing closure I knelt on the ground to ask them what was going on and that is the precise moment he turned the ignition of the car on and shifted the gear . . . I can’t remember to what level but I remember grabbing the door and clinging on it, as they tried to drive off. After that all I remember is hearing a loud crack and a sharp pain in my abdomen, before I fell to the ground. They then sped off and left me for dead,” said MaPecca.
After being hospitalised MaPecca says he was shocked to wake up to the police accusing him and wanting to charge him with a crime (attempted robbery), which he says is a misconception, composed by his wife’s lover to hide the crime.
In this whole complicated scenario, where is the wife?
Lying low, perhaps waiting for the dust to settle and has been barred not by family but MaPecca from visiting him in hospital.
What boggles the mind is if he was accused of attempted robbery, then his wife should also be charged as an accomplice.
“If the police were interested in doing their job this mystery or rather crime would have been solved in under a second. This is all just a cover up scheme, his wife was there, she knows it, MaPecca saw her with her lover and was shot for confronting them,” said a relative from MaPecca’s family, Roderick Pedzisai Moyo.
Moyo said he suspected and feared that some police officers might have accepted a bribe and were trying to have the attempted robbery charge stick on MaPecca and not have him push for a counter charge, which would be attempted murder in its own right.
“This is a very simple but yet complicated issue. This man (Oricious) according to the grapevine is said to be friends with some of the police handling the case. Even the car used on the night of the shooting is said to belong to one of them. There are many questions that need to be addressed. For instance, where is the car, gun and why wasn’t Oricious arrested. How can there be such a charge? These cops are just playing coy,” quizzed Moyo.
From an analytic view the woman at the centre of all this controversy and drama, if ever the police want the attempted robbery charge to stick should indict MaPecca’s wife.
Artistes call for boycott of MaPecca’s wife’s lover restaurant.
Since the story broke out and made headlines, artistes have been rallying behind MaPecca.
They have come together, as a united front and have since raised funds to acquire the services of a lawyer.
Also they are working towards setting up a Go-Fund -me account to raise money to get MaPecca decent medical attention in South Africa, where they hope to have him operated on to get the bullet dislodged from his body.
MaPecca was shot and left with a bullet lodged in his body. According to one of his arts friends, the bullet is lodged somewhere near his heart and spine.
“It will be a tricky operation; he needs the best medical service he can get. That is why we are trying to raise funds for him,” said the artiste.
They have also taken their campaign to social media, where they have been calling for a boycott of the outlet — Fish and Chicken City:
“Coincidence? Is it a coincidence that a man tries to rob his wife’s boss at his house, or that the businessman claims three man were trying to rob him and he shoots the guy who is the woman’s husband?
“Businessman says the husband was a robber and that’s why he shot him. Man wakes up in hospital and says his wife was having an affair and that when he confronted them the businessman shot him. Wife says she was not on the scene. Husband says she was. That boyfriend drove her away after shooting him.
1. What’s the truth?
2. Who is telling the truth?
3. This is a case of money versus poverty — and who will win?
4. Does truth stand with money or poverty?
Until the truth comes out — my family and I, like other minded families are joining in the boycott against Fish and Chips Five Street and 12th Avenue and the other on Fife Street and 8th Avenue. Time to demand the truth,” wrote one artiste on his Facebook account.
