Ngumuya abandoning responsibility
There are times and moments in life when you must accept that you are now grown up and gladly start acting like an adult.
This is the time when, as an individual, you need to discard your youthful boxers and knickers and slide into manly robes as your age demands. And that is the process of growing up which comes with its responsibilities.
For some reason, some are slow in accustoming themselves to their new demand, and yet some hardly adapt. Their wish is probably to remain young forever. But the problem comes when situations arise when they must lead by example.
During these moments one is left with just one option: to rise to the occasion and be the model that everyone around you expects you to be. It becomes shameful when during such moments you not only let yourself down, but all those who look up to you.
Inside the week, we learnt of a raging warfare that has silently been going on between two of the country’s musicians: Faith Mussa and Allan Ngumuya. The bone of contention being the unpaid appearance fee of K355 000 which Ngumuya owes Mussa.
After running out of patience, and probably for lack of better options, Mussa in March this year moved the courts to force Ngumuya to pay the fee. Even with the summons delivered to him, Ngumuya still could not be jerked into action.
The most unfortunate part is that this debt dates as far back as 2015 when Ngumuya invited Mussa to grace a show where the former was celebrating 31 years in the music industry. And 31 years is a long time. Very few have achieved such a feat.
As it is, at least everybody expected that by now Ngumuya, the former Blantyre City South member of Parliament (MP) who we can safely say is a veteran in the trade, to know better some of the intricate demands in the music industry.
You do not get someone and have him perform at your event and then default payment. And the reports coming from the Mussa side that he even stopped picking his calls as he tried his best to avoid the Mdidi star does not speak well about a person of his status.
Whatever justification, Mr Ngumuya was not supposed to play elusive in honouring his part of the deal. As a man and a supposed father figure to Faith, all he needed to do was invite him and have a man-to-man talk. If he had some financial challenges, he was supposed to make them known to him.
In that way, no one, including the media, would have gotten wind of the deal which was getting rotten between them. But now it has gone all sour and in the public eye an act which eats on his credibility as an artist and a person. Do they not say a stich in time saves nine?
Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case in the music industry. Many promoters and even musicians in some instances have played a quick one on their colleagues after contracting them to perform at their shows. Which is sad.
Not long ago, the late Grace Chinga’s children Steve Spesho and Miracle found themselves destitute in South Africa after their show’s promoter disappeared after the duo’s performance without giving them a penny. It was only after the two sounded out an SOS that well-wishers mobilised resources for their return ticket.
This kind of treatment is one which no single artist, including Ngumuya himself, would love to go through. Throughout the decades he has stayed in music, I would want to know how many times he has been subjected to that kind of treatment and what he made of it.
No matter how long it will take to pay Mussa his dues, but this has been a huge minus on Ngumuya’s persona. We will all go back to the same question: If he cannot be trusted on such small matters, then what if more is given to him? n
