Lulu rethinks future strategies

Musician Lulu says he will consider altering security arrangements during future shows after his One More Time album launch at Lilongwe Golf Club on Sunday ended in a near-fiasco due to teargas fired by the Police.

“It is something that has eaten us all. It is what it is, we cannot reverse it now. Now we know who we can work with or not,” he said.

Sunday’s show was thrown into turmoil around 2am when Police fired teargas in an attempt to disperse gatecrashers, but the teargas spilled over the venue, prompting the performances to stop for over 40 minutes as both artists and patrons sought safety from the teargas-filled area.

The experience prompted the music ace to release a statement on his Facebook page on Monday where he appeared to take a sly dig at the Police for the heavy-handed reaction to the situation.

He wrote: “I am not sure yet of the reason why Police had to give us a bad experience of that teargas when Diamond came all the way to support your fellow Malawian. I always believe that my win is your win and the other way round.

“But one person chose to doom all the efforts and sleepless nights we went through as a team to put together what you saw last night.”  

On whether he feels the police would have handled the situation differently, Lulu was unequivocal in his response.

“I am not an expert in security issues, but I personally feel that was not a good approach,” he said.

But the teargas and a few technical glitches that contributed to the slow pace on Sunday appears not to have distracted the artist who is geared to proceed with promotional shows for the album, with the first show slated for Amaryllis Hotel in Blantyre in due course.

To spice it all, the Malawian artist said he is on duet project with the Tanzanian star Diamond Platinumz and they are working on two songs one of which will be included in the new album.

He said: “We are planning to shoot a video in Tanzania and from there I will shed more details. We will include this song in the album on the online platforms since the CDs were already printed.”

British-trained security expert who specialises in crowd control, Pascal Mkuta, said the approach devised by the Police was wrong.

“The Police needed to pick out the ring leaders and deal with those rather than taking the last option. In such situations, we always ask the question of nessesity and weigh the options from there,” he said.