Artistes: Temptations that come with fame

He succumbed to temptation and took a second wife. After all has been said and done, that is the package of fame when you are at the top of the pile such as he was a few years back: Wine, women and song.

THE curse of celebrity: Beginning of the fall?

He succumbed to temptation and took a second wife. After all has been said and done, that is the package of fame when you are at the top of the pile such as he was a few years back: Wine, women and song.

Bev-and-Macheso

His is a cautionary tale of the problem that bedevils most sons of Adam when their pockets begin to weigh a few more grammes than before. Suddenly, you are “heaven’s gift” to womankind and you walk on the proverbial water. But they flatter to please these daughters of Eve and they stroke your ego for as long as the honey drips from your pouch.

Now currently embroiled in a domestic squabble involving salacious detail about a “lilliputian” manhood, disputed paternity of his two children with the small house and charges of child sexual abuse, sungura music star Alick Macheso is in the papers for the wrong reasons these days.  Macheso has gone the way of most men.

Former flame Tafadzwa now wants $7 000 a month maintenance payoff where as he offers $1 250. Is Macheso really able to afford that or it’s just his ego offering theoretical dollars? Yesterday he may have been able to, but today when the dancehall crew is running away with the paying crowds?

The saga continues and my colleagues in the media will continue to ogle this ping pong. It sells papers; it is the very juice of tabloids. Unfortunately even the “serious” papers can ill resist a bite whilst a family bleeds in public.

Guy code smashed to smithereens One thing sisters reading this column must appreciate is that an attack on a man’s number one asset is an attack not to be carried out.

It is the one area not to be visited even with the excuse of drunkenness and it may be the reason why my childhood neighbour uMaMoyo has a missing line of front ivories though she now loves smiling endlessly under the spell of sorghum brew and Malawi gold.

Attacking a man’s manhood may also be the reason why Reeva is gone — slain by the hand of her lover Oscar.

This is just a surmise, but neither is it a condonation of the dastardly deeds of our species when ego is wounded.

So Culture Beat empathises with Macheso though some vicious brothers have said he had it coming trying to domesticate a zebra just because it does have a whiff of donkey written all over it. The harsh ones say that our musicians believe too much in their own press.

A few axes to grind . . . How come, after all this time, Macheso has to endure the scandalous attack on his one prized possession by a woman about whom he wrote a song called Tafadzwa?

How come her departure is coming at a time when the press has been profiling the waning draw power of sungura music? Now, that the gate takings have taken a serious dip as the fans have anointed a new king or kings of popular music rather?

Fame is as fleeting as fortune. And sometimes, it is as fleeting as a good time girl’s attention. This is hopefully not going to earn me the wrath of feminists. I am no misogynist, but I watch these things. Obviously my statements have a sputtering of bias. I am after all a man.

Erotic dancer Bev returns to the dance floor! The entertainment industry will never be the same again not after Beverly “Bev” Sibanda, the exotic dancer’s escapades of leaving the stage and returning to it after just three months.

I hesitated to comment about it, but maybe I should now be a prophet too because I predicted that the so-called manager of Bev, one Mr Harpers and the prophet Magaya would not see eye to eye over the girl. I mean Harpers is like Bev’s leech. He lives off her saucy dancing.

What was he going to do at the church when the deal obviously didn’t involve him? He is not a “star” and thus there was no cut for him. Did he really want Bev to meet the Lord? But what did the two expect when they went to church? Endless manna? I blame the prophet for all the drama though because Bev might have missed an opportunity to meet Jesus. The life of Christianity is a life of sacrifice not pleasure or comfort.

If you were the devil, would you not make it a point to squeeze the living hope out of a new convert’s heart? Of course you would!

Therefore Bev should never have been promised a shop or whatever.

She should have been told in plain language that her lifestyle was the stuff that damnation is made of, but that only forgiveness of sin and eternal life is what is guaranteed to her in this world through repentance.

Was John the Baptist not beheaded when Christ was in the neighbourhood? Christianity is not for sissies and it seems that some of these churches are selling people bottled moonshine.

Prophetic watch Now time and again I have to take more than a passing glance at some of the things happening in contemporary culture. In Bulawayo we have more than one poster of new prophets setting up their “ministries”.

One held an all-night prayer emblazoned “Oil and Apple” as the awesome theme.

Another called prophet Honour has also arrived on the scene. The title pastor is no longer grand enough. I suppose we are in the “prophetic age” huh?

Look, it’s well and fine that folk want to preach the word and want to be the present age’s Elijahs, but the market is getting seriously crowded now.

We will end up having more prophets than church members. Why must the good Lord have so many spokesperson anyway? Let’s watch the prophets as they unravel.