Zakes Bantwini Disappointed with the South African Music Awards

Zakes Bantwini seeks to make national awards shows like SAMA become better and more prestigious following years of disappointing artists and South Africans at large. The music producer finally bagged his first award from the South African Music Awards after being in the game for the past 15 years.

Taking to his Instagram page, Zakes appreciated the two awards won on Sunday night but rebuked the organizers of the show for not being trustworthy.

“Regrettably the SAMAS have broken our trust, they have devalued the honour and prestige, which the awards once stood for, there is no integrity in the way at which the show is being produced, the planning, the awarding of artists & in extending the basic courtesy of RESPECT TO THE ARTIST!!!”

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In another post shared on Wednesday, the Osama hitmaker claims he will effect a change in South African Award shows with the help of RISA – The Recording Industry of South Africa.

“I must be clear that my statement emanates from my desire to evoke change and to improve upon the shortcomings and challenges we face currently with the state of our Awards show. As such we have engaged with Risa and will be holding public talks on how to go about remedying some of the issues we have brought to light,” he wrote.

“That being said I want to take this time to thank all of the sponsors who continue to support the arts and creative sector by backing the awards yearly, Your show of faith and support reassures us that we can continue to grow our industry, Thank you once again; the music industry appreciates your continuous efforts to help us achieve greatness.”

“Thank you to Risa for its commitment to engage with the artists and for the willingness for transparency and transformation,” he wrote.

Zakes added that the SAMAs have become a money-making scheme and put a message to people saying “if we celebrate mediocrity we will only have ourselves to blame. ”

He then calls on all artists and music lovers to unite and rebuild the industry. We can’t help but notice his last message directed at Ukhozi FM, telling them to do better this year when choosing a crossover song. If you may recall, last year Ukhozi FM chose DJ Hlo’s song as the Song Of The Year. But many people were puxxled as to who the DJ is and what is her claim to fame.