Raisedon Baya

LAST week the supposedly “biggest show of the year” turned out to be the biggest sham as violence reared its ugly head and marred everything. When a show that big ends up abandoned artistes and promoters must really be worried. The Sama festival featuring Busy Signal, Busiswa, Windy D and others was billed as possibly the biggest live musical show in Bulawayo for the year 2017. For the whole week before the show the entire city was excited. Dancehall fans were particularly over the moon. Frankly speaking, Bulawayo has hosted big musical shows before and these shows have gone like clockwork, smooth and peaceful. The Kalawa Homecoming shows have seen some of the biggest crowds in Bulawayo but not even one of them has been abandoned or disrupted by crowds. So what really caused the violence at the Busy Signal Show? Was it the ‘‘type” of crowds or poor organisation or there was a hidden hand that really didn’t want the show to go ahead?

As we hit our brains and scratch for answers let us remember that this violence and crowd disturbance happened barely a few months after the Bulawayo City Council banned noisy shows at the Amphitheatre. So if City authorities can ban shows because a few residents complained about noise during the night shows at Amphitheatre what more