Charles Nsaku, Joseph Nkasa trade barbs
Veteran musicians Charles Nsaku and Joseph Nkasa traded barbs over contractual agreements, which resulted in Nkasa failing to travel to South Africa to honour shows last weekend.
Voice notes, which they sent to each other following Nkasa’s no-show in the Rainbow Nation, went viral on social media.
Nsaku, who is based in South Africa, organised close to four gigs in South Africa, with Nkasa on the line-up.
The two are said to have agreed on a fee of K600,000 for Nkasa to perform in South Africa and that Nsaku was supposed to send K400,000 as deposit.
But everything collapsed after the two later started playing hide-and-seek on each other and that led to Nkasa not travelling to South Africa.
The two tried to outmuscle each other on who was in the wrong on the issue, with Nkasa claiming that Nsaku did not honour the agreement of the issue of money he demanded and even claimed that Nsaku, who is based in South Africa “cannot have K400,000 to pay him and wanted me to board a truck at Dedza for South Africa”.
The ‘Mphwayi ndi Tsoka’ star even went further to use strong language in his voice note, adding that he does not eat anybody’s money.
In response, Nsaku said he paid over K200,000 to Nkasa and claimed that he had also requested for money for Nkasa to collect in Lilongwe as deposit.
The ‘Chiphazi’ creator, who used to star with his Ali Kutauni Sounds before he left for South Africa, said Wednesday that the issue was now water under the bridge.
“It was just a misunderstanding and sometimes when there are disagreements a lot is said but we have sorted out everything and there is no bad blood between us. I respect Joseph Nkasa as a brother and he also respects me. There are people, who call the shots in the industry, who wanted to bring confusion,” Nsaku said.
He called on promoters in the country and in South Africa to unite musicians and not create enmity between them.
“I am insisting on this because some people created this problem because of their selfish motives. They didn’t want us to excel in these gigs and so, mine is a call to promoters out there. Let us work to grow arts and support each other,” Nsaku said.
He said all the gigs took place in the absence of Nkasa.
“We have learnt lessons over the issue. All I want to advocate is love. I engaged Joseph Nkasa because I know he is a good musician and as Nsaku Africa we were going to honour everything. At first we wanted him to come by coach but we realised it’s tough and that is when we got air tickets but there was no response from him,” Nsaku said.
Nkasa said he did not want to get stranded in South Africa.
“It was just a misunderstanding on the contract, I charged them K600,000 and I wanted a deposit of K450,000 but so many things happened which made me change my decision and by the time they were talking of air tickets it was too late, I had already changed my mind.
“If they fulfilled everything I could have gone without any hesitancy,” the musician said.
