The Sunday News
Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
FIRST, they came for Jah Prayzah, Macheso and Winky D.
It was in June 2017 when the Bulawayo City Council (BCC) decried that the three aforementioned artistes would not hold gigs at the Bulawayo Amphitheatre anymore.
The trio were just too noisy, sources within the BCC said at the time, and had become accustomed to disturbing the peace whenever they were in Bulawayo and in the process, giving residents around the venue sleepless nights.
“We have banned all-night musical shows from the venue. Artistes can book the venue for afternoon performances up to 10pm.
But Jah Prayzah, Alick Macheso and Winky D have been completely banned from holding shows at the venue. They can come and look for other places to perform in the city but not at the Amphitheatre,” a council source told Sunday Life at the time.
For some residents, this extreme change in rules was understandable, even welcome. In 2017, while Macheso was perhaps not the force he once was, he still attracted quite a crowd and Extra Basso’s guitar was still known to wail loudly deep into the wee hours of the morning whenever he performed in the City of Kings.
As for Jah Prayzah and Winky D, well they were at their peak, and as their real or imagined rivalry for the Zimbabwean musical crown simmered, they continued to pull crowds wherever they went, with Bulawayo not being an exception.
The crowds and their lung busting chants and screams seemed to have been heard by the city fathers and resultantly, they had joined Macheso on this dreaded BCC blacklist.
However, a year later, when the noise about the ban of the Harare-based trio had died down, council set down and came up with another resolution. This time, all artistes would find themselves in the same basket with those three “bad apples” from the capital.
“Council at its meeting of the 7th August 2018 banned musical shows while weddings, churches and other non-religious activities were allowed to continue to take place at the Amphitheatre. These bookings are allowed to operate from 7am to 10pm and bookers are advised to keep down noise nuisance likely to emanate from these activities.
The banning of musical shows was due to the numerous complaints of noise from the residents of Suburbs and surrounding areas concerning activities from the Amphitheatre,” BCC Corporate Communications Nesisa Mpofu told Sunday Life last week.
According to the dos and don’ts of the resolution, “The Amphitheatre is open to all members of the society for example: churches, weddings, political gatherings, youth functions and other activities “except musical shows” while all activities will be closely monitored by council staff with failure to comply with the rules of the facility will leading to the banning of the offender.”
The 2018 resolution has kept artistes off one of Bulawayo’s premier venues, with the ban further compounded by restrictions ushered in by Covid-19.
However, while some artistes have given up on the Amphitheatre, others have been disturbed that some music concerts, from less “noisier” genres, are still held at the venue.
It has led to disgruntlement among some, with the feeling that only a certain kind of music is allowed at the venue. It is not known what criteria is used to decide the right kind of “noise” for the venue.
Last week for example, a gospel group held a concert at the Amphitheatre. Others, like imbube artiste Vusa Mkhaya, have been rebuffed in their attempts to do the same.
“First of all, if a venue is closed down for music gigs, I don’t understand who then decides that this gig is okay, this gig is not too noisy or this kind of music is acceptable. I went to the Tower Block to book The Amphitheatre, not for myself but for a colleague and someone came with a paper that said that the Amphitheatre is no longer allowed to host shows. She said that this applies only to evening shows and I said how about if we arranged for the show to be an afternoon gig because this is a family friendly event but she said the Amphitheatre is now closed for all shows at any time of the day,” he said.
Mkhaya said that artistes were desperate to use the Amphitheatre as it was one of the few viable venues for family-friendly gigs.
“The reason why someone like me would love to host a show there is that, firstly, it is good for family-friendly events. There are very few venues in Bulawayo that are like that and by that, I mean venues that are not connected with alcohol and bars in any way. So, if you don’t perform at City Hall, which is a closed venue and limited now in these times of Covid-19, there is ZITF which is also a closed venue.
“If you want to do an open-air kind of gig, Amphitheatre is the perfect place because its either you go to Barbourfields Stadium or Queens Sports Club. So, Amphitheatre is a perfect venue for family-friendly, picnic kind of family gigs where people can bring their children and sit down and watch the gig and go home, without alcohol or the kind of things that you witness in bars late in the night and so on,” he said.
Mkhaya said he felt that the ban was motivated by classism, as the city council seemingly did not care when gigs and other events were held at venues in the western half of the city, such as White City Stadium.
Last month, social media users quickly pointed out the shifting of goal posts by opposition politician David Coltart encouraging his party’s supporters to converge in their numbers on White City Stadium for a rally.
The previous week, Coltart had raised the alarm on the use of Kumalo Hockey Stadium for the ill-fated Cassper Nyovest gig, saying the stadium was no longer being used for its intended sporting purpose. The same standards were not being applied to White City, it seemed.
“If Khumalo Hockey Stadium and Amphitheatre are closed on account of noise, why are they not closing down White City as well?” Mkhaya asked.
“Or is it because people from the township deserve the noise? At White City, so-called noisy events happen and there are people who stay close to the venue. Rallies and events happen there and there doesn’t seem to be any problem. So, we want to understand who decides who can host a gig there or not.
Because when I went there the BCC employee I saw said the Amphitheatre right now is for church services, funerals or gigs that don’t have noise. I told her that the gig we wanted to host also doesn’t have noise and we wanted to book for two days, with the other day just for setup. We were going to pay for the whole day while setting up our equipment and also do so the next day,” Mkhaya said.
Local promoter, Mduduzi Mdlongwa of 3D Events, said that the feeling among promoters was that residents near venues like Khumalo Hockey Stadium and the Bulawayo Amphitheatre frowned upon music they felt was from the townships.
“I think for these venues this side of town were affected by these regulations even before Covid-19, with the neighbours to venues like Amphitheatre and Kumalo restricting the gigs there.
The residents made a petition and it passed but as for us, when we went for the event that we did recently, we simply applied. The only issue that was there was that times are not yet permitting for people to go in there until the wee hours of the morning.
That was the rule that forced them to shut us down.
“The truth of the matter is that the elite people living in those areas don’t want people to have gigs in those areas and they will always complain about the noise. But the only thing hindering us right now is the fact that there is a curfew in place which makes it difficult to have late night shows,” Mdlongwa said.
