Zimpapers Logo

Brenda Phiri Harare Bureau
SEH Calaz and Soul Jah Love have blamed each other for the violence that marred the Sting 2014 in Harare at the weekend.
The much touted dancehall face-off that featured up-and-coming Zim dancehall artistes ended in fracas after Calaz and Jah Love clashed on stage.

The fight spilled to the fans, leaving the police with no option but to throw teargas into the five thousand strong crowd.

That led to a stampede where at least 10 people were seriously injured.

Conquering family boss, Soul Jah Love said his hands were clean in the matter as he was simply attacked for being the better artiste on stage by nemesis Seh Calaz. Despite pictorial evidence suggesting that Soul Jah Love could have been physically aggressive towards different people, he insisted he did not throw a single blow at anyone during the Sting.

“All I know is that I outclassed Seh Calaz on stage and I was clearly the crowd’s favourite. This didn’t go down well with him prompting him to attack me. I never retaliated and you’re the ones trying to make a story out of nothing,” he said before hurling vulgar insults at this reporter.

Seh Calaz on the other hand refuted the claims saying it was regrettable how the violence led to scores of fans getting injured.

He said Soul Jah Love had jumped the gun too soon by concluding that he had won the Sting after only three songs into the battle.

“I don’t understand why Jah Love would lie about me attacking him. The reason I crossed over to his side was because I was trying to exit the stage and the exit was towards his direction.

“Cans were being thrown and the stage manager advised us both to go backstage and wait for things to settle. I don’t know why Jah Love ignored this, but as I tried to exit his bouncers started shoving me, leading to the fracas,” Seh Calaz said.

He added that while Soul Jah Love might have misread the situation, his behaviour incited the fans to be more violent leading to police throwing teargas at them.

“It’s unfortunate that the theme of denouncing violence among fans continues to fall on deaf ears. Throwing cans doesn’t solve anything, but brings problems like how we ended up cutting short our two-hour performances after barely 15 minutes,” he said.

Seh Calaz said he had nothing against Soul Jah Love and would perform with him again, adding that it was his hope that the two join forces in future as a sign of solidarity.