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Mtukudzi fans turned away on UK tour
By Showbiz
Reporter
IT should have been the icing on the cake.
Oliver Mtukudzi, Zimbabwe's best selling artist in history, had just staged two massive shows in London and Brighton before arriving in Leicester on a dry Saturday night.
Hundreds of fans filed into the state-of-the-art Athenna Hall to watch the man they simply call Tuku, supported on this tour by his son, Sam, and daughter, Selma.
A week before, another Zimbabwean artist, Alick Macheso, staged a show a few doors from the Athenna, at the Starlite Nite Club.
The timing of the two artists' performances forced some fans to take sides, and the shows were duly dubbed 'The Battle for Leicester'.
Macheso's show attracted a sizeable crowd. Mtukudzi quietly waited for his moment to walk onto the stage and let the music do the talking.
By 12am Sunday morning, close to 700 fans had made their way into the Athena Hall, a classy arena that perfectly fitted the occasion. Then what every music promoter dreads happened.
In a delayed effort to quicken things at the door, security guards set up two queues for the 500 fans still outside. One queue was for people with advance tickets, and the other for fans who were paying at the door.
Just as the advance ticket holders started making their way into the venue, a small group from the other queue surged forward.
The contracted security personnel at the door panicked. There are many theories as to why they felt so intimidated by an overly peaceful crowd, but in the heat of the moment, they sought the help of Leicestershire Police.
By the time the police had the crowd under control, it was nearing 1am. The Athenna closes at 2am, but the doors close at 1am. Representatives from Mtukudzi's promoters, Zimtownship tried to intervene -- hoping at least to get advance ticket holders waved through.
Those who have dealt with scatty doormen in any British night club know that trying to negotiate with them will turn the same outcome as asking Morgan Tsvangirai to talk to Arthur Mutambara.
No less than 30 riot police were disgorged at the entrance. An order from one of their superiors was given that they should begin dispersing the huge crowd. Some had come from as far as Leeds, Luton and it is safe to speculate that some came from as far as Scotland.
It didn't matter an iota to the police where they came from. They must simply go home, the instructions were barked at them from a hand-held public address system.
While this drama was unfloding, Mtukudzi was on stage, totally unaware of the fast developing story outside. In fact, the sense that something was up for most of those at the show only came as they left the venue at 2am to be confronted by button stick-wielding police officers.
If the crowd outside had managed to make their way into the venue, it would have easily been the biggest show by a Sub-Saharan artist to be staged in the Midlands.
Mtukudzi's traditional promoters, Zimtownship, were left counting their losses. Assuming the estimates of the people outside the venue are correct, they could have lost up to £10 000.
Fungwa Mawarire, a spokesman for Zimtownship released the following statement:
He said: "We had at least 500 people who were in the queue at around 12 midnight, 100 of whom were holding presales tickets and the rest waiting to pay at the doors. The contracted security personnel at the venue started sensing, unnecessarily, it was being overwhelmed by the crowds and panicked.
"At that point, they failed to separate the pre-sale ticket holders from those buying at the door, so that the pre-sale buyers could be fast-tracked into the show as per their given terms of reference. The otherwise peaceful queue momentarily collapsed when the trigger-happy, overreactionary security personnel, citing safety issues and covering for their own incompetencies, solicited the help of Leicestershire Police.
"When the local
police arrived, they decided to use a completely
different algorithm to separate the presale buyers from those who had
no
tickets. By the time the police restored some order to the queue, it
was almost 1am and the show was finishing in an hour's time. In terms
of the rules, there was not going to be any admittance after that time,
hence the crowd was asked to disperse, with the aid of the police.
"We confirm that all our attempts to remedy the situation which would have enabled us to reopen the doors to the crowd that was still outside and wanted to come and enjoy the performance fell on deaf ears and were not considered by the local police.
"We presume the security personnel has never worked on a Black African show, let alone a crowd puller as big as Tuku and so had underestimated the traffic of people attending, despite all the advance warning given to them.
"At Zimtownship we feel that Zimbabwean people in general, and Tuku's fan base in particular, are a mature, peace and fun loving people who deserve better treatment. Involving the police at that stage was totally unnecessary and a complete cover-up by security guards who over-estimated their own crowd control abilities. We do recognise the challenges faced largely by simple, clean, joy-loving immigrant black crowds and, detaste bully tactics sometimes used by authorities to control crowds.
"We confirm having refunded half advance ticket holders to date, and appeal to any other advance ticket holder who could not make it into the venue to submit their un-used and complete ticket to their purchasing agent for a refund.
We would like to thank all our Zimtownship-Tuku fan base for making this show an amazing experience for us. However we send a VERY BIG APOLOGY to our valued patrons on behalf of Zimtownship and Tuku to those who were stranded and were left with no other option but to sadly miss the show.
"More importantly we say sympathise with those who had made significant sacrifices by driving from places as far away as Scotland, Leeds, London etc BUT did not get to see Tuku perform. We regret not being able to make you watch the show, but the situation was completely out of our hands.
"We hope to
return to Leicester as soon as possible, and hopefully to the same world
class venue, but with a different security arrangement."
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