The Sunday News
Raisedon Baya
HARARE is like a country on its own, with its own life, culture and rules. Things that happen in the capital city rarely happen elsewhere in the country.
For example, only artistes in Harare have “released” sex tapes in the hope of riding on the social media noise created by the release. It hasn’t paid as much as the artistes had hoped for but the noise was noticeable.
Harare has money. Good money of any kind. You can name it and Harareans have not been shy to flaunt this money.
Some year or so ago a Harare artiste sold a CD for about US$5 000. One guy just decided to make a statement. The whole country was shocked.
I remember in other cities some artistes trying to auction their music and not getting any eyebrow-raising figures. The excuse given was that Harare people have money. Others said Harare people support their own. So after several attempts at auctioning and not getting the right buyers this was abandoned. The incident was forgotten. Life moved on.
Some time early this year, right in the middle of the pandemic and national lockdown someone called several artistes to a meeting and then went on to give them US$1 000 each for attending the meeting. This was like a group of 20 artistes.
You should have heard the noise that erupted afterwards. A group of artistes went into a meeting to represent the whole sector and ask Government to intervene and offer relief to the sector. Now imagine the noise after, especially from artistes that had not worked and earned anything for nearly a year.
The defence given was that it was individual money and that the person had all the rights to do whatever he wanted with his money. When the said individual came to Bulawayo and called a meeting many artistes went to the meeting very hopeful, hands even itching, but came back with nothing but promises, yet to be met by now. And naturally the noise died down.
A few days ago it happened again in Harare. A South African musician was on stage and one of our own people stood up and decided to pay the South African artistes five times more than what was in the contract. Obviously the South
African artiste was not performing for peanuts. Our neighbours usually charge an arm and a leg for performing in this country. Now imagine five times more.
Of course it was just another Harare moneyed person showing off his riches. Again nothing wrong with him doing whatever he wants with his money.
But it was rather insensitive if you ask. Here are local artistes languishing in poverty, most of them haven’t worked for almost two years, most didn’t receive any relief from anywhere.
You ignore all this, invite foreign artistes and go on to publicly pay them five times more than they charged. It can only be weird.
Can we conclude that Harare has money or that Harare has people that want to show off that they have money? Whatever the case I just think Harare behaves like a country on its own, with its own life, separate culture and separate rules. Weird, isn’t it?
