Soul Jah Love Insulted Me says Ex-Manager

The Soul Jah Love/Benji Nyandoro soap opera has taken a new twist. Bad boy, Soul Jah Love, who was in the papers last week for wife-bashing ...

The Soul Jah Love/Benji Nyandoro soap opera has taken a new twist. Bad boy, Soul Jah Love, who was in the papers last week for wife-bashing and alleged hard drugs abuse, seems to be adding more depressing episodes to his never ending real-life drama.

In our last edition, the chanter’s new manager, Father Paris, stated that Nyandoro had been fired on allegations of stealing money after a highly attended gig in Mbare.

However, Nyandoro, who runs Jive Zimbabwe, a one-stop shop for local arts development, public relations and events management, swears he has never stolen a dime from any artiste he has worked with.

In fact, he claims to have actually raised over US$100 000 for Soul Jah Love in the slightly over five months he was with him and that he is still owed a substantial amount in management fees by the chanter.

Nyandoro believes his problems with Soul Jah Love surfaced when the chanter realised that the 10 percent he had agreed to pay him was not a percentage of a few hundred dollars which he was accustomed to, but that of over US$10 000.

“When I joined Soul Jah Love, he insisted on a contract. I commend him for that because it made him the first artiste to actually feel obligated to pay me for my work. Everyone else I had worked with before preferred that I do charity for them.

“However, I do not think Soul Jah Love expected me to make him that much money and that he would have to pay me 10 percent of it. I made him over US$100 000. So he owes me a substantial amount and that might have scared him, especially if he was not saving the money or investing it elsewhere,” said Nyandoro.

The Jive Zimbabwe boss said the “Zvinhu” hit-maker did not realise that money was never the primary objective when he agreed to manage his affairs.

“I knew I was not going to be his manager forever, my plan was to do one year, with clear milestones to rebrand Soul Jah Love, put in systems and create a stable and consistent income through long-term deals with corporates. Every time I work with an artiste, the objective is to take them to the next level using our methodology.

“Unfortunately, October 21, 2017 was a test for both of us and we failed. I felt the allegations were an insult and decided to withdraw my services. Contrary to the word out there, I was not fired, I withdrew my services,” said Nyandoro.

He continued: “I will not labour much on the allegations because it all comes down to ‘your word against mine’ – a blame game. However, there are specific strong points I read from the story published in The Sunday Mail Society last week . . . “On the issue of $5 gate charges, we probably sold 50 tickets and had to announce on stage a price reduction to $3. Further affected by the doubt of whether Soul Jah Love was really around after word that he was in South Africa, tickets only started moving well after midnight.

“Which brings us to the poor and irresponsible decision made by Soul Jah Love to accept a gig in South Africa on Friday 20th (October) and have an album launch the following day in Zimbabwe. I strongly advised against the decision, which came with huge consequences.

“The South Africa gig was a huge flop that then affected their timeous return for the album launch. His trusted lieutenants, those assigned to revenue collection, who were also the key people in planning, only arrived back in the country on the day of the launch at 10pm. Jah Love himself arrived at the venue for the first time at 2am, just before going on stage.

“We had no systems in place. That made us porous. We lost money through weak checkpoints as we had to engage the services of strangers on the same night. Soul Jah Love knew what we were getting into and I forewarned him of the likely consequences. Unfortunately the show had to go on regardless.”

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