Court orders Wilz to refund pageant promoter K2, 500 over Petauke no-show
By Charles Musonda
A LUSAKA-BASED musician, popularly known as Wilz, has been ordered by the Matero Local Court to refund a beauty pageant promoter K2, 500 instead of the K5, 000 she had demanded after a contractual dispute over a botched performance booking.
The was in a case in which Christabel Phiri, 36, of Kabangwe area, sued Wilson Ngoma, 26, of Chelstone, in the Matero Local Court, demanding a K5, 000 refund from the K8, 000 down payment she had made to the musician whose stage name is Wilz, and who also goes by the name Mr Nyopole for a performance at a beauty pageant she hosted in Petauke last December.
“Calling each other names does not look nice because you will just bring your names into disrepute. He will refund you K2, 500 this month, at the end of May,” Local Court Justice Lewis Mumba said in his judgment.
Phiri told the court that she had engaged Ngoma to perform at the show following an agreement on a K15,000 fee, but that he failed to honour the contract after missing the event entirely.
She said Ngoma only arrived in Petauke in the early hours of the following morning, which was long after the show had ended the previous night.
In his defence, Ngoma told the court that the delay was not of his own making, explaining that Phiri had been slow in making the down payment he needed to prepare his car for the trip, forcing him to hire a vehicle from a car rental company instead.
He said he started off from Lusaka in good time but was stopped in his tracks at Chongwe, where a bridge on the Great East Road had been washed away by heavy rains.
Ngoma said he took an alternative route through the bush on the advice of local villagers, but the Toyota Mark X he was driving became stuck in a field, forcing him to abandon the vehicle and hitch a ride to Petauke.
He told the court that upon arriving in Petauke the following morning, he proposed to Phiri that they proceed with a free show, given that some members of the public had already purchased tickets the previous night, an offer she declined.
Ngoma said Phiri subsequently flew back to Lusaka to report for work, leaving him stranded in Petauke with neither money for upkeep nor transport back to the capital.
He told the court that he survived by recording adverts for local businesses in Petauke until he had raised enough money to return to Lusaka.
Ngoma said upon his return to Lusaka, the two became embroiled in a bitter dispute that was initially reported to the police before Phiri eventually filed a civil suit against him in court.
He maintained that he had not intended to miss the show and that he too had suffered losses, having been forced to meet repair costs after the hired vehicle was involved in a minor accident during the trip.
