While attention-seeker, Wicknell Chivayo, was fanning fires this week with his comments on Facebook about light skinned women, Urban Groover, Trevor Dongo, was blazing his own flames with lyrics in his new song, “Shoko reRudo,” which glorifies light-skinned women.
Fast on the heels of his recent street fight, Dongo seems to have decided that controversy is a great way to get publicity, or was simply unaware that his lyrics would not be well received.
Dongo puts his foot deep into it with the very first line to his song, “Ndakambofunga pamwe urimurungu, ganda rako kuvaka nekupenya, Ndizvo zvakanditora more, ndizvo zvakandivaka (I thought you were white when I first saw you, because your skin is so bright and glowing. This is what enticed and captivated me and drew me to you).”
The video to the song, released on November 16, shows Dongo going gaga over a light skinned woman who looks to be of asian origin while her darker skinned friend looks on. The irony is heavy here. The darker skinned woman is an observer, a cheerleader and applauder and not a participant, while Trevor, who shares a similar skin tone with her, sings about the beauty of the other woman’s skin. Drop mic or scream.
One writer, Jean Gasho, took to her blog and facebook to express her displeasure with the self hate portrayal in the song saying, “Truly disappointed by Trevor Dongo’s new song Shoko ReRudo and his endorsing of self-hate of dark skinned women. The black inferiority complex projected in the song is disturbing.”
Gasho goes on to say, “To say I’m disappointed is an understatement. Music is one of the most powerful tools of influence over society. And sadly Dongo has used his music to feed into the inferiority complexes and self-hate of black people.”
Later in her post she sings praises for Bryan K’s song Heavy Machine, which shows appreciation for darker skinned women.
Meanwhile Wicknell’s Facebook post of November 21 was causing lots of feeling station activity across the country. He posted a picture of him with a supposedly Zulu woman and captioned it, “WICKNELL THE ZULU……. TI ITEI MAKOROKOTO TAPINDA TAPINDA MACHENA KUNO…….I’ve finally decided to marry this SOUTH AFRICAN girl from the village. We had a good discussion but she asked why can’t you marry back home? I said I think most of our ZIMBABWEAN girls are very disrespectful and stubborn. I said as a matter of principle no WEALTHY man wants a girl that’s EVERYWHERE doing EVERYTHING with EVERYONE… I’m attracted to intelligence… I said to her don’t get me wrong, the light skin and a perfectly crafted body will certainly get my attention but sooner or later I’ll get bored with it and I ALWAYS DO… I need you to outsmart me. Make me feel like I can learn something from you and grow with you. I told her if you do that and you can have me FOREVER….”
Over one thousand two hundred comments later people were still dishing out disses to the glory-seeking businessman. On Star FM, KVG and Phatisani spent a good 15 minutes, maybe more, complaining about Wicknell’s post and while they did, their WhatsApp account went crazy as Zimbabwean men and women vented.
It doesn’t end there. The ‘yellow bone’ (light skin) appreciation syndrome is huge in South Africa where right now “Pearl Thusi”, a song by the aptly named ‘Emtee’, sings praises to the “flawless yellow bone” woman of the same name. That video has been viewed over 2.2 million times on YouTube.
Even when artists don’t sing overtly about light skinned women, they fill their videos with them. For some reason it’s a growing trend lately, this yellow bone thing. It’s so serious that vendors of skin lightening pills and creams are doing brisk business in Zimbabwe and across the continent.
The pills and creams had disappeared in Zimbabwe after circulating widely in the 80s and then being banned because they had some adverse side effects, but they’re back with a bang.
It’s been a tough year for Dongo. In February this year he was embroiled in a nasty fall out with his wife of nine months, Ashley Mawumbe. At about the same time, a nomination at the Zimbabwe Music Awards (ZIMA) which presented possible relief for the smooth singing artist ended badly. Dongo was not present to receive the award and Mudiwa, a fellow artist in the industry volunteered to collect it on his behalf. This did not go down well with the award winner who went on to spit venom on social media to the shock of many people who widely condemned the unkind response from Dongo.
Dongo later apologised to Mudiwa.
Fast forward, October 2016. Trevor made headlines following a video that went viral that showed him fighting with a street vendor over what he alleged were abusive comments made to his female friend by the latter.
