Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
For the sins of your fathers, you, though guiltless, must suffer — Horace, The Odes, Book III, Poem 6, l. 1.
It was the moment that the entirety of Zimbabwe had been waiting for.
This was the night of Saturday, 21 September and the venue was Pakare Paye, the home of the arts in Norton built by the late Zimbabwean music legend, Oliver Mtukudzi.
It was the occasion of the first annual Oliver Mtukudzi International Festival of the Arts (OMIFA), an event meant to celebrate the life and work of the man after who it had been named.
Daisy Mtukudzi
However, in that late hour, Tuku was far from everyone’s mind when his daughter, Selmor, stepped on stage.
After an initial snub, Selmor had finally been invited to the event after overwhelming public pressure.
Now she stood in front of the microphone at Pakare Paye, live in the flesh, for the first time since her father had passed.
For those who sought drama and tension, the occasion did not disappoint. She had barely gotten into her set before she broke down emotionally, decrying the fact that she was being treated like a stranger in her father’s house. She walked off the stage, and attempts to bring her back by her sister, Sandra and her husband, Tendai Manatsa proved futile.
Cameras flashed and phones started recording. A moment in the country’s music was captured and shared.
For some, the incident was just further proof that Selmor was a drama queen, a performer addicted to attention who had seen the crowd before her and decided to milk the moment for all that it was worth.
Some questioned why she had not just gritted her teeth, cast aside her differences with her stepmother, Daisy Mtukudzi, and gone through with a performance meant to honour her father.
They questioned why she had to “soil” an occasion meant to honour a great man. Instead of cleansing the stain brought by the drama of her initial snub, her tears had thrown further dirt on the illustrious Mtukudzi name.
However, for those who have been paying attention to the unfolding drama over the years, those tears were years in the making. After that acrimonious appearance, Selmor and her older sister Sandra, went on a podcast by DJ Ollah to clear the air about their relationship with their father and the rest of their family.
While some might have expected Selmor, a person who is better accustomed to the microphone to take up the most significant airtime, it was the segments by Sandra that were the most hair-raising.
While Selmor fought back tears as she narrated some of the most harrowing details of their childhood, Sandra never cracked as she narrated the details of what appeared to be a childhood horror story as she delved deeper into it.
Selmor Mtukudzi
During the interview, Sandra revealed that she had lived with Tuku and Daisy after the separation of her parents. She narrated how, at one time she was abandoned in an empty house with a man who used to tend their garden.
“I remember an incident that happened when we lived in Kwekwe at a place called Glenwood. I was 16, turning 17 at that time. I knew my mum (Daisy) and dad were building in Norton although I didn’t know that there was a house being built during that entire time. Everyone else knew about the house but I didn’t because I wasn’t supposed to know.
“So when the house was done, I remember they called people from church for a farewell. That’s when I found out that they would be moving but I was not told the date when this would happen.
Then a few days later I met people in town telling me that they had seen my father around. So I thought that when I arrived home, I would find my parents at home. When I got there, the house was empty. I was so touched. People had gone to their new home and I was left with the garden boy in an empty home.”
She spoke of how she used to share a pot of sadza with the family dog and how she and Selmor would be left behind when their siblings, Samantha and Sam went on holiday with the rest of the family.
The pair’s testimony cast a very dark shadow on Tuku as a father. To most Zimbabweans, Tuku has always been an unblemished hero. In their eyes, he has always been the man who sang and played so joyfully with the children on that classic Olivine commercial.
Surely, the man who sang Perekedza Mwana could not have left a 16-year-old girl child at the mercy of an older male domestic worker, without any means to fend for herself? Could he?
For some, the Tuku household drama is just a symptom of a disease that has been eating away at the hearts of Zimbabwean families for years. Due to the prominence of the family, the Mtukudzi family conflicts make for compelling reading but hidden away from curious eyes, similar stories are unfolding in many Zimbabwean households.
The hurt laid bare by Sandra and Selmor illustrates that Tuku left a lot of unresolved issues and this is also a reality for many families that are left to pick up the pieces when their patriarch departs.
In the absence of sound leadership, many families are left broken, nursing wounds that are too deep to heal. As great a musician as he was, Tuku’s role as a father has come for fresh scrutiny in the aftermath of his death.
The main takeaway for others was the alleged devious nature of Daisy who, if the story is true, seems to have spent the best part of her life with Tuku auditioning to be cast as the perfect version of the stereotypical evil Zimbabwean stepmother.
During the interview, Sandra and Selmor seemed reluctant to lay any blame on their father. He was, after all, a rolling stone, a performer who did not always have time to tend to issues within his household. When a hit album was released, he would spend months on end on the road.
“I was afraid to tell him anything. Perhaps he was also afraid . . . I never complained to my father but sometimes I would notice that he was defeated,” said Sandra.
While he was a man who lived mostly on the road and on stage, one can assume that Tuku at least noticed that his 16-year-old child was missing when he moved from Kwekwe to Norton.
His actions will sound familiar to thousands of Zimbabwean children whose fathers have left them at the mercy of women who might see them as the offspring of the competition.
Sandra Mtukudzi
Upon his death in 2019 his first wife, Melody Murape, insisted that Tuku still loved her and only walked away when she decided she did not want to become part of a polygamous marriage.
Perhaps throughout the years, Daisy might also have always looked over her shoulder, worrying about the return of a woman she might have looked at as her husband’s first love.
With that in mind, she might have been inclined to treat her children with an iron-fist, as she saw them as part of the “enemy camp”. The duty to make sure that they were treated correctly in such instances fell to their father.
Tuku’s music has brought healing and comfort to people from across nations. When HIV/Aids ravaged Zimbabwe, Tuku sang the country through the worst of the crisis, soothing people with his hoarse voice as the scourge laid low entire villages.
Before antiretroviral medication reached the country’s borders, Tuku’s music was a pill that kept the country going through a dark tunnel that did not seem to offer any hope of light at the end.
When families preyed on widowed women, he made Neria, an undying anthem that forced a country to look itself in the mirror and reconsider its ways.
As his family affairs play out in public, his fans hope that his family might find a similar kind of healing from his lyrics. For the rest of Zimbabwe, the unfolding drama might provide an apt opportunity to reflect on the life of an icon and realise some matters need resolution lest the sins of the fathers visit the children.
