Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
WILLIS Wataffi should be a happy man.
In 2025, he will be celebrating the silver jubilee of Qaya Roots Music. This is a brand, a style of music, a cultural movement built from his blood, sweat and tears.
Qaya Roots is a sound — a lifestyle and for 25 years, Wataffi has watched it grow from the ground, nurturing and tending to it as it flowered into the movement he always wished it would become.
So, 25 years after the birth of Qaya Roots, Wataffi is set to release an album, a book and a documentary while holding several gigs to show his appreciation to the fans who stood by him through thick and thin throughout that time.
It is a testament to his abilities as a songwriter and singer that Wataffi has managed to stay in tune with a world that changed from analogue to digital when he was in the prime of his career.
His voice has stayed consistent, weathering storms that would have rocked the boats of lesser artistes.
Yet, for all of that, Wataffi is not entirely happy.
While for the first two hundred words of this article, this writer has concentrated on Wataffi and Qaya Roots, he now has to turn to a topic that dampens Wataffi’s joy — Afrika Revenge.
For one, Wataffi is tired of conversations that begin with talk of his music and new initiatives but then take a detour to a group that has not existed for almost two decades. Afrika Revenge is the sting in the tail of every conversation and Wataffi believes that he has been bitten enough by it. He believes in not only time to lay Afrika Revenge to rest but to also exorcise its ghost once for and all.
Twenty-five years since the birth of Qaya Roots, Wataffi feels that it is time for Zimbabweans to allow him to move on. More importantly, he believes it is time for some fans to move on as well. Afrika Revenge, he told Sunday Life in an interview, is dead. For good this time.
“Twenty years later, you are still asking people, to come back together. Come back with who? Where? That chemistry cannot be manufactured. You cannot buy that chemistry. So people who are asking about a reunion should know it will never happen. Afrika Revenge as they know and like it, will never happen,” he said.
The desire for an Afrika Revenge reunion has somewhat overshadowed parts of Wataffi’s otherwise stellar later career, as fans and scribes fixate on a group that died a long time ago.
“People don’t even know that Willis has five award-winning albums by himself, after Afrika Revenge. People don’t know that. Why? Local media decided that they were going to focus on Afrika Revenge. No matter what I did that became their sole focus,” he said.
Wataffi blames the media for the Afrika Revenge hangover that has plagued his career since Mehluli Taz Moyo walked away from the group in 2006. Perhaps Wataffi, who penned the group’s songs even before they got together, does not understand the sway that Afrika Revenge holds on ordinary Zimbabweans who witnessed the duo in its pomp. Music, at its best, is a time capsule, taking people back in time. Thus, Wataffi might not realise that some are unwilling to let go of Afrika Revenge because it transports them to happier times, back into a country that no longer exists. Wataffi is thus a victim of memory, of men and women who are living the past through Afrika Revenge.
“So, I want to know from my fans if they want to hear the music or if they want to see two faces because Afrika Revenge was never about just the two faces. Afrika Revenge wasn’t our name, to begin with. So, is it the face they want to see or it’s the music they want to hear? So, on the gratitude tour, I want to thank those who decided to follow the music because this is what it has always been about at the end of the day. Some of this music was written and curated before Afrika Revenge was born and Mehluli joined. So, I am for the people who are following the music instead of those who are crying about a reunion that will never happen,” he said.
Willis Wataffi
Wataffi said most of his disappointment stemmed from the fact that fans seemed incapable of accepting the evolution of Qaya Roots, a concept that was born years before the famous Afrika Revenge duo saw the light of day.
“Afrika Revenge evolved from an 11-member group to a five-member group, to a three-member group with the likes of Chichi.
We had the likes of Otis Ngwabi with us but the group was streamlined to three people, Chichi, Mehluli, and myself and this was whittled down further until it was just Mehluli and I. Now it is just one person. Despite this, people still ask why we split as a group. A split happens when two members, like P-Square, sing in different places. They’re still singing, filling up the stadiums but doing so apart from each other. That’s split.
“When Chichi left the group and went to France, there was no hullabaloo about it because she went to do her own thing.
“She’s still in France now and it is still okay.
2006 happened and Mehluli left and you see him here and there because music is his passion. However, he has changed his profession. The truth is if he was busy with music, doing shows, and releasing albums like I am, people would perhaps have a reason to tell us to get back together.
People can’t ask me to get back together with someone who is no longer singing,” he said.
Away from the obsession that some fans might have with the past, Wataffi said that he anticipated the 25th anniversary of Qaya Roots to bring good tidings for music lovers.
“The celebration of Qaya Roots music is something that will be spread throughout the whole year. The main highlights are the album, which people have been expecting, then a documentary on Willis Wataffi’s musical journey, where he has been, and the things that have happened throughout that time. This includes the uncomfortable topics, including things that happened to and with Afrika Revenge.
There’s also a book called The Mind of a Man that I will be launching later this year,” he said.
Wataffi said the latest album would feature some musicians that he had worked with over the last 25 years that were now scattered all over the world.
“The album has not been named yet for professional reasons but it shall have 13 songs. It will feature some prominent musicians from Zimbabwe and also some artists from South Africa. I will also have a Canadian-based Zimbabwean artist on the album.
I did a song with Jeys Marabini about celebrating Africa. In the song, we basically beckon the rest of Africa to show brotherhood when a fellow brother is in distress. People should not turn a deaf ear or a blind eye when fellow African brother is in strife,” he said.
When all was said and done Wataffi said the album would be a celebration of those fans that had stood behind him when some jumped ship when Afrika Revenge broke up.
“It’s been fun, it’s been great and the 25 years don’t feel like 25 years when you look back on it. So I want to thank the people who have supported me through the ups and downs. We are moving and we are not stopping. To Afrika Revenge fans, those who remained, and those who decided to continue with me, I would love to thank them as always.
To those who remained in 2006 when Afrika Revenge stopped working as a duo, I would like to say Afrika Revenge has always been evolving but sadly Zimbabwean people don’t see things for what they are,” he said.
