Koffi Olomide is an example of how celebrities must not behave

Being whisked away from a Nairobi TV studio to a bleak police cell at the airport awaiting deportation is not an experience familiar to celebrities.

This is not how Koffi Olomide had expected things to go as he looked forward to a relaxed night in his presidential suite at the posh Hotel Kempinski.

However, as one of our local social media wags put it, he had “kick-started” his tour on the wrong footing at the arrival terminal with that unfortunate incident involving one of his female dancers.

After it went viral, the musician didn’t help matters when, during his TV interview, he downplayed the video photos of him assaulting the lady as “camera tricks”.  

Years ago, it would have been unthinkable for a comparable star — like Franco a.k.a Luambo Luanzo Makiadi — falling into such a dishonourable situation. He used to jet into town like a monarch with a huge entourage, as I hear he did in 1988 to headline the grand concert marking the “Ten Great Years of Nyayo”. Franco getting arrested by a pesky policeman? Unheard of. There was nothing of today’s social media buzz, mercifully.

I once heard a tale (I confess I never checked out if it was true) that during a brief flight stopover in Nairobi in 1980, the Jamaican reggae superstar Bob Marley was found with a generous quantity of marijuana in his jeans pockets.

None of the law enforcers dared to touch him. You see, he was en route to Zimbabwe for her independence celebrations as a State guest, an honour bestowed on account of his freedom struggle anthem, “We Gonna Liberate Zimbabwe.”  I guess Marley enjoyed certain diplomatic privileges on that occasion.

I should own up that I’m no expert on rhumba and its variants. All I know for sure is that the Congolese have the greatest rhumba musicians in the world.

They pack nightclubs not just in Nairobi, but across cities like Luanda, Lusaka, Douala, even Lagos. In Europe, their favoured bases are Brussels and Paris.

The person who opened this rhumba world for me was the late journalist Amboka Andere, who was once, for a short period, my editor at the since departed Weekly Review magazine. He was frightfully knowledgeable about Congolese music, especially on the old masters like Franco and Tabu Ley.

These days whenever I need to catch up on who are the latest rhumba stars, there is always my helpful friend Amos Ngaira, the Nation’s entertainment writer.

CANCELLED CONCERTS

Alas when problems come, they don’t always come singly. On top of cancelled concerts in Nairobi and Lusaka, Olomide was arrested shortly after arrival in Kinshasa for the Nairobi assault.

The very same day he was charged, taken to court and sentenced to jail. There was no bail, no injunctions, no prosecutorial delays. This should be a lesson to our comical and tunnel-visioned justice system, which only springs to life when issuing melodramatic political injunctions to spite the National Assembly or the Executive.

It turns out Olomide’s problem in Nairobi was not an isolated incident. A similar case in Kinshasa a while back earned him a three-month suspended sentence.

What is more, a warrant of arrest awaits him in Paris for jumping bail there in a case of attempted rape. He now avoids that city like the plague.
I am not much of a moralist, even less a moraliser. Still, I know when it’s unwise to get contrarian. What particularly struck me about the Olomide saga was how those who felt the artiste deserved to be cut some slack were cowed into defensiveness and even submission amid the social media frenzy.

Not all of them were the typical male chauvinist bullies. Among them were notable ladies like the musician Achieng Abura, who received vicious flak from a furious sisterhood for being “traitorous”.

Which brings me to ask, what became of that curious entity called Maendeleo Ya Wanaume that professes to speak for battered husbands? True, there has always been a clownish aspect about it, something which makes many people — men included — not to take it seriously.

Last week my media colleague Oyunga Pala pointedly chose to take up its theme in a very tasteful deadpan which he posted online:

 “I find it troubling when the recurring media narrative is seen to tolerate violence towards men and packages it as amusement between hard news. It is akin to endorsing the idea that male victims of spousal violence asked for it and thereby belittling their truth.”

Oyunga is too smart to be pushed into the one-dimensional boxes such as the Olomide drama dragged many into.

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