African Attire on Fleek a Universal Success

  • Kelly Khumalo was among four from SA who gave revellers a show to remember
  • Dato Seiko stirred the crowd to money throwing frenzy
  • Letshwiti denies Choppies in a food stall was the only blemish on a perfect sho

IMI MOKGETHI

This year’s edition of the annual African Attire on Fleek will certainly go down in history as one of Botswana’s best organised and most attended shows ever.
The event, which was put together by Colourful People Entertainment, took place at Royal Aria Stadium in Tlokweng over the weekend and delivered to expectations, keeping revellers on their feet throughout the night with blazing performances from local and international artists.
For the first time since its inception five years ago, the show brought four artists from South Africa, namely Kelly Khumalo, Malome Vector, Big Zulu and PJ Powers-Thandeka. From their electrifying performances, these international powerhouses clearly understood their assignment and delivered it without folly.
Local acts also brought their A-game with exceptional performances from stars like Dato Seiko who stirred the crowd to a near-universal response of throwing money on the stage.  Dr Vom even took a moment in his performance to express his gratitude to the organisers for five years of being in the lineup. Afterwards, the ‘fleekers’ took to social media to also applaud the organisers for a job well done. They had tuned up decked out in accordance with the theme of African attire.
This was not unexpected, given the surprise appearance of the King of Kwasa, Franco, who stepped on stage for a few minutes to market his upcoming show, Soul Fill Up, that is slated for 2nd April in Gabs. But the “Ke Lela le Lona” hit maker left the crowd in suspense because that’s all he did when they had hoped for a little performance from him.
The event coordinator David Letshwiti has agreed with most revellers that the show went according to plan, except a few challenges involving failure to honour allocated time slots by a few local artists. “Artists like Ketz Johnson did not perform because they came late,” Letshwiti said in an interview.
“We also had a problem with Motlha who performed only one song because of some issues he had.”
While he was reluctant to talk about that Motlha’s hitch, he said the “Mma Motse” hit maker ought to issue a public apology for cutting his performance short. Efforts to reach Motlha proved futile at the time of going to press.
Meanwhile, some members of the public have slammed the event organisers for allocating a food stall to Choppies Supermarket and not small vendors. However, Letshwiti says vendors were not “in anyway” affected by the presence of the multinational retailer and are not complaining. He added that they used to have 10 food stalls operated by corporate businesses but have reduced them to five in order to make room vendors.
“For us, having Choppies at our event shows growth,” Letshwiti said. “At first the vendors were skeptical of competing with Choppies but were happy in the end because they made lots of sales and others even ran out of stock.”
The next African Attire show is billed for Maun on 17 April.