The Sunday News
Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Correspondent
AS he begins to serve 231 days in prison for defrauding a truck driver, details of how Chase Skuza defrauded his brother Solomon’s kids 10 years worth of royalties have emerged.
The late star’s son, Solomon Jnr, alleges that the late great musician’s family struggled to make ends meet because of the musicians’ greed.
Chase has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons these last few weeks, after it emerged that a female dancer had grabbed him by his privates after he failed to pay his workers’ fees a fortnight ago. Meanwhile, the long arm of the law grabbed him this week after he failed to pay off a three-year-old debt.
As his woes mount, his late brother’s son Mqhele Solomon Skuza Jnr was not shy to reveal to Sunday Life how Chase had denied them their birthright for a decade, claiming his illustrious brother’s royalties while they were too young to challenge his reign over the family’s fortunes.
In a previous interview, Solomon Jnr had revealed to Sunday Life that they had indeed been in a battle for his father’s inheritance with an influential figure in the music business.
Emboldened by his uncle’s latest legal troubles, Solomon Jnr has revealed how Chase thwarted their efforts to get their inheritance from even before his late mother passed away in 2003. Chase’s heartless acts have led him to believe that his late father may be punishing him for his actions 24 years after he was buried.
“My mother was the one that knew everything about the royalties and how the money was to be collected. She has been collecting it before she was involved in a car accident around 2001. She was in South Africa recovering and so she couldn’t collect the money. So questions were asked by the people that distribute the royalties because they were wondering where the people that collect Solomon’s royalties were because it had been two years since they were last collected. That’s when Chase came into the picture,” he said.
According to the South Africa-based sound engineering graduate, Chase had claimed to represent the family’s interests after his mother fell ill.
“He told them that he had the right to collect the royalties. He told them that he was taking care of Solomon’s children because their mother wasn’t around and therefore he could collect the money on their behalf,” he said.
Solomon Jnr said other family members had tried to intervene on their behalf, but all their efforts were in vain.
“There were many complications and my grandmother and older sister tried to resolve the issues. When Banolila came out and was a hit, there were questions about who was supposed to get the money for the accolades. My sister and grandmother tried but failed. They had all the papers. They had everything including his will but whenever they would try to resolve the matter it would surprisingly not get approved,” he said.
At one point things got so bad that the late Solomon’s children had to sell off beasts from the family’s herd as they tried to come up with the money required for school fees.
“We were never exposed to poverty because my mother had things in order. She had many herd of cattle and other things so she would make sure that everything was always taken care of.
But things got hard and you would find that you don’t have money for school fees and things like that and you would have to sell some cattle just to get through a school term. When you got chucked out of school for fees other kids would be surprised because they would say how can Solomon Skuza’s child fail to pay fees? That was because we were getting nothing from the work done by my father,” he said.
Things began to change when Solomon Jnr finished his studies in high school. However, other family members still expressed disgruntlement with Chase’s behaviour.
“When I was done with school in 2006 that’s when I started to discover more about Chase. I was told that this person is your father’s brother and does music so I was really excited to be with him. So he took me in.
“Chase was the son from my grandfather’s younger wife while Khumbulani and Solomon were both from the same mother.
Khumbulani would ask him why he was neglecting his mother who was suffering in the rural areas and he would lie and say that he was not getting anything from the royalties,” he said.
According to Solomon Jnr, the musician played hide and seek even though he was under his wing.
“When I was now older he would take me to the lawyers and say that he had taken me in so this was evidence that he was taking care of Solomon’s children. He would take me to some offices where I would be told to remain behind while he went in for discussions.
“Around 2008 he realised I was getting exposed to things in the music industry that might eventually lead to me discovering about the royalties. Actually the people that he was doing dealings with were the ones that started telling me about everything that had been going on. He owed them money and they wanted to get him arrested and I would tell them to spare him and continue getting money through the same arrangement,” he said.
Five years after he got control of his father’s assets and royalties in 2013, Solomon Jnr still looks back with regret at the decade they spent without getting a cent from their father’s sweat and tears.
“From 2003 to 2013 we got nothing. We could have been far. We could have at least bought a house or cars because it was a lot of money. He could have taken the money and at least bought us jerseys, school shoes or paid our fees but he did none of that. I’m sure he doesn’t have much now from the money that he collected,” he said.
