By Zweli Martin Dlamini

The Bible tells us about the story of Angel Lucifer, who was leading the Mass Choir in Heaven and blessed with a talent to sing.

Lucifer was then blinded by popularity and fame as other Angels were worshipping her and, she then started to perceive herself as bigger than God and subsequently lobbied the Angels in an attempt to overthrow the Almighty God.

Worth-noting, Lucifer was created by God and God was able to see what she was planning and thinking inside her ‘heart’ even before she lobbied the other Angels for the rebellion against God.

As a result, Lucifer was subsequently defeated and thrown on earth together with the other Angels who supported her in the attempted coup.

After being defeated, Lucifer was renamed by God as “Satan” and her followers were stripped-off the status of being Angels and renamed “demons”, both Lucifer and her followers are waiting eternal condemnation.

Lucifer was a singer heading the Praise Team in Heaven but fame and temporary power destroyed her, ,however, God did not remove the singing talent from Lucifer and that’s why today, we have gospel artists who can sing with flamboyance when their lifestyle or behavior is completely different from Christian principles.

Singing is a God given talent and not a barometer to measure someone’s proximity with God.

After being evicted in Heaven,Lucifer started to terrorize humans, misleading them to disobey God as a way of revenging against God, this came after God decided to create human beings in his image so they can worship him, today we have millions of Christians worshiping God in churches and Lucifer “is not happy about that” because that was her job before being evicted in Heaven.

Lucifer don’t want humans to go to Heaven and she is in an ongoing fight with God.

Now, like Lucifer, Mzwakhe Myeni was singing at Ncandweni Christ Ambassadors and his brother Timothy Myeni was paying him handsomely for his talent, eNCA Music Productions even purchased a brand new Navara and Mzwakhe was helped to buy a plot at Mandosa Township where he built his home.

But popularity or fame resulted to Mzwakhe Myeni rebelling against his brother, he demanded shares and more money and after failing, he opted to focus on his solo music projects.

Efforts were made by the then Lubulini Member of Parliament(MP) Timothy Myeni to make his brother Mzwakhe understand that, he will struggle after leaving Ncandweni Christ Ambassadors but alas, Mzwakhe felt he was bigger than Ncandweni and Timothy Myeni.

Life then became difficult for Mzwakhe Myeni, he tried to join the struggle for democracy as a member of the Swaziland Liberation Movement(SWALIMO) at the peak of the June 29 political unrest not because he was a revolutionist at heart but because, he thought that was a quick way to get money and climb the political ladder.

Mzwakhe then went to Channel S to complain that, he was being assaulted by the police during protests but was not getting any cent from donors, he started to identify individuals benefiting money from donors and urged others to dump the struggle for democracy and support the Tinkhundla system.

Mzwakhe then tried to stand for Tinkhundla elections and despite his ‘popularity’ voters rejected him openly, they know him but they don’t take him seriously to a point of trusting him with public office.

Recently, Mzwakhe was ‘kicked’ out of a dinner event organized by Tibiyo TakaNgwane for the King at Dalcrue-Malkerns, Mzwakhe is now a known political outcast.

It is clear that Mzwakhe failed to understand that, singing comes with popularity but, being popular does not mean you are intelligent.

In fact singing gospel comes with popularity because the popular name of God is attached to the project.

In conclusion, let me advise other young people to learn a lesson from the controversial life of Mzwakhe, I was already a journalist back in 2009 when Mzwakhe Myeni was still singing at Ncandweni Christ Ambassadors.

I would take my notebook and travel to Manzini to interview him and I’ve seen him gradually being destroyed by fame or popularity.

In fact, almost all these gospel artists who claimed popularity means intelligence while climbing the ladder of fame and I am able to measure as some go down without noticing, because some of them became popular while I was already a journalist.

Mzwakhe Myeni even tried to sing a song about SWALIMO, because artists have a tendency to think temporary popularity means power, he thought SWALIMO was taking over Government at the height of the political unrest and decided to align himself with the newly formed political organization.

After realizing that, his political party was failing to take over Government, Mzwakhe Myeni resigned and composed another song praising the undemocratic Tinkhundla system of Governance, he was positioning himself either to be elected or appointed.

We wrote a series of articles warning that, it has never happened anywhere in the world where gospel artists will just emerge with their stage popularity, mislead the people and take over a country, politics and singing are completely different projects.

Even now, I am not sure if Mzwakhe Myeni has realized that he needs serious introspection, when we(journalists) call him for a comment, he has a tendency of recording, clean himself in the recording while talking and then share the audio on social media and by so doing, he thinks he is still popular and can easily destroy a journalist who question him.

Young people must learn from the sad story of Mzwakhe Myeni, a talented man who was destroyed by his own popularity and fame.

Indeed, there are many similarities between the life of Mzwakhe Myeni and Lucifer who was destroyed by fame and popularity.