a. Tuku was in-between relationships when he had his children – meaning that he had children with other women after he married both Melody, Sandra & Selmor‘s mother – and after he married Daisy, his widow – making for a messy & entangled love life.

b. This means that he was prone to infidelity, which is perhaps not surprising given his profession & profile as a high profile musician and the touring – which means that he was constantly away from home.

c. With infidelity a recurring theme, this is likely to have triggered a sense of paranoia, inadequacy & insecurity to all the women he was involved with.

d. Perhaps they would have feared, not without just cause, that he could potentially up & leave and jump onto the next crushing beauty he had set his eyes on while on tour.

e. Tuku likely loved his children whole heartedly but lacked the courage to address the cruelty and ill-treatment that the children felt they were being subjected to by Daisy.

f. Tuku was likely aware of that ill-treatment and tried to make amends but in the end, he was unable to be insistent / failed to stay the course, probably because Daisy was too headstrong for him.

g. Sandra being left to fend for herself alone in Kwekwe, not being given Tuku’s cell phone number or not being told about the new house – exposing her as a girl child to extreme levels of isolation, vulnerability & deprivation is mean spirited, cruel and amounts to neglect, emotional, financial, and psychological abuse.

h. Failing to check on her, over and above what is highlighted above amounts to abandoning her and the absence of parental care, love and affection in that limited context.

i. The narrative set out by Selmor & Sandra suggests that Tuku was likely fearful of Daisy to the very end. The elaborate ruse to engineer an underserved & forced apology to Daisy via his Muzaya a desperate attempt at facilitating reconciliation & reproachment – which failed spectacularly & saw the Newsday Newspaper apology being given short shrift – is a case in point.

j. Daisy comes across as an extremely cold, ruthless, petty, vindictive, selfish, greedy, cruel, controlling, manipulative, calculating, devious & the classic stepmother from hell.

k. Examples of that behaviour includes surreptitiously abandoning Sandra in Kwekwe, directly that she be given Sadza prepared from the family dog Kwana‘s pot and thus a different meal from her half-siblings, being discriminated against when going to family gatherings, failing to keep up with College fees & costs when Tuku was touring & the controversies concerning how Pakare Paye is currently being run, which is tied to the cloud of uncertainty surrounding how Tuku‘s Estate was devolved.

l. It would appear that it is unclear whether or not Tuku left a valid will.

m. One one hand we have got the Lawyer from Chibune & Associates making such a declaration to the family and on another, a Will apparently emerging from nowhere and declaring Daisy the sole benefactor of Tuku‘s Estate – a state of affairs which appears to be hazy and contested.

n. We also know that Tuku was apparently in the process of trying to prepare a Family Trust – which shows that he intended to make arrangements for other beneficiaries beyond Daisy.

p. This is not surprising as Tuku would have known that his family life was complex and involved children from multiple relationships – and it would have been clear to him that not making adequate provisions for them would have left them at the whims of Daisy’s highly unpredictable behaviour – risking them getting nothing from his Estate, which is what has unfolded.

q. In addition to the above, Tuku also had complex business affairs – with Band members like Picky Kasamba & others who had been with him for a long time – plus the Pakare Paye Arts Centre needing detailed legal house keeping to cater for them long after not only his demise, but that of Daisy as well.

r. Just like Bob, Chidyausiku, Mujuru & others before him, Tuku had enough time to settle his affairs before his tragic demise. From Sandra’s account, it appears as if this was not done, and the

s. We have to face the inconvenient truth that our national icon lacked the courage to see that through, perhaps out of the sheer fear of this being discovered by Daisy and being construed as an act of unforgiveable betrayal by an ailing spouse.

t. Tuku was aware of & struggled to deal with the fact that Daisy did not want his other children from his other relationships not only to live with them but to socialise and interact with him – leaving them all with no option but to do this behind her back!

u. Credit to him that he fought for Sandra to stay with them in Norton and for sorting out the College fees situation, but that’s not enough – much more needed to be done.

v. We are consoled by the fact that, contrary to @Shadaya_Knight’s false, libellous, deeply offensive, irresponsible and insensitive comments, Tuku, Selmor & Sandra were on speaking terms, and he was in the process of bringing all his children together and composing a song with them before he tragically ran out of time!

w. We know from the Podcast that Selmor is probably more emotional than Sandra – or it could be that Sandra is more adept at keeping her emotions in check & suffering silently or more resilient by virtue of being an elder sister and perhaps having bore the brunt of the ill-treatment.

x. It’s clear that both Sandra & Selmor carry a lot of trauma from their childhood. The impression that one got from the Podcast is that there were discriminated against, cast away and treated as inferior and unwanted, leaving them emotionally and psychologically scarred.

y. Tuku cleared left them a legacy of a raging family feud and struggling to feel like they belong to the same nuclear family and share the same identity & worth as his children with Daisy.

z. By ghosting them and continuing to exclude them from legacy functions including the recent commemorative event at Pakare Paye, Daisy is reinforcing that exclusion and their sense of detachment & lack of belonging – causing them to relive their childhood trauma.

Conclusion
The above events offer a sobering lesson and call for a careful reflection about the true cost of broken homes and the suffering that is visited upon children from such homes.

It is clear that they carry their childhood trauma into adult hood and never truly heal, often silently carrying the burden of their emotional and psychological scars.

Whilst Tuku tried his best to retrieve the situation to the very end, the reality is that he failed to surmount the challenges posed by Daisy.

Like many men, it’s likely that Tuku was simply enchanted & blinded by Daisy‘s beauty, which inexorably shifted the power dynamics in the relationship, leaving him effectively feeling like someone being vicariously held hostage / captive.

On paper & outwardly, he was a superstar and free to chart his own destiny. In reality, he felt constrained & struggled to be assertive and to confront Daisy to achieve emancipation as a prelude to fighting for the well-being of all his disadvantaged children.

This is a timeless reminder to many folks out there. If you establish a new relationship and have got children from a previous relationship, you have got a parental duty to ensure continuity of care at the same level at a minimum.

You have to ensure that children are loved, cared for, protected, financially supported and seen at the same level they used to be before the demise of the relationship.

Be ready to fight for and stand up for their rights and emotional and mental well-being. Be ready to protect them from neglect and abuse.

Be ready and willing to accept that human nature means that it is possible for the very person you love to potentially have a well disguised nasty & cruel streak in them and to unleash this behind your back!

Be willing to challenge and confront wily and devious new spouses. Be ready to make provisions for your wishes to be respected via a written & up to date Will ahead of time!

Can The Feud Be Resolved?

Finally, @djollah_7 proposed to take steps for the family feud to be resolved. On paper this seems wise and the right thing to do.

Never say never – but in reality this appears difficult to accomplish and feels forced. This is because, this has existed well before Tuku‘s death.

It’s clear from Selmor & Sandra‘s accounts that Tuku himself eventually gave up and resorted to interacting with them secretly, sometimes via Sam Mataure‘s facilitation.

The above state of affairs is likely to be attributable to the fact that perhaps owing to circumstances around Tuku & Daisy‘s courtship & marriage, perhaps with Tuku going back & forth – Daisy never felt secure in the relationship – at least initially – and regarded the children as a threat!

Perhaps deep down, she had never accepted them as part of the family – and only pretended to accept them because she had to, to secure Tuku‘s hand in marriage, while in reality she secretly & deeply loathed them!

What with Sandra‘s account of what she was told in Kwekwe about being denied usage of some household utensils because Daisy was allegedly worried about Sandra destroying “her children’s property,” this after she had been abandoned by stealth – and Daisy clearly untroubled in her conscience – & clearly devoid of maternal instincts – not showing any concern for young Sandra’s well being at that point!

Let me pose this question clearly: is there a world in which Daisy would ever have allowed her daughter Samantha to be abandoned alone in an empty house, unprotected, with no love & condemned to destitution?

If none then why was it acceptable for such callous treatment to be accorded to one so young & vulnerable? What sin had she committed? To have been born from Tuku’s previous marriage?

Sandra also takes into her confidence pertaining to the incident involving Sam Mataure paying her salary and this somehow triggering Daisy into throwing a hissy fit as if she was somehow not entitled to to that salary!

Then there is also the alleged nasty comment Daisy allegedly made in front of the whole Band when Tuku had brought her into the fold as a Team Manager, something along the lines of: “I hope that you do not steal my money!“

If true, that’s nastiness on steroids and lying unprovoked! Really dangerous, calculating, jealous and insecure – perhaps as that would have meant that Sandra was too close for comfort.

She would perhaps have been jealous about the affection Tuku showed them and saw them as an extension of their mother – struggled to see financial resources being spent for their upkeep and considered them as future adversaries in the devolution of Tuku‘s Estate!

She would have seized upon and weaponised the Newspaper story to carry a lifelong grudge & refuse to accept their apology – and perhaps encouraged Tuku to do the same – to use that as justifiable & cast iron grounds to exclude them claiming a share in Tuku‘s Estate.

It would appear to me that she has got a financial incentive to keep the feud festering and is using it as a cudgel to keep them away from Pakare Paye Arts Centre.

By remaining silent while ostracising Selmor & Sandra, it keeps a sense of mystery & intrigue going – causing the public to second guess the cause of the feud and who is culpable – helping her to sustain a sense of moral superiority over them while in reality she is simply ring fencing, controlling and monopolising control of Tuku‘s legacy & Estate with her own children with Tuku to the exclusion of others.

The evidence from Selmor & Sandra‘s accounts suggests that there is deeply ingrained, historical hatred on her part, that she is strong willed & unlikely to be moved by public sentiment.

If she is moved, this is unlikely to be sincere / genuine, and is likely to be consistent with what we saw recently, when she bowed to public pressure and invited them to perform but never welcomed or greeted them – and went on to issue a statement attributed to her that is hard hitting, lacks contrition & openings for a soft landing consistent with a family matriarch pursuing rapprochement / who wants to patch things up with her family!

As a take away, remember, most households with step children are likely to be social crime scenes, as such children tend to suffer in silence for years on end.

In light of this, please allow Selmor to bleed her pain out … yes, even publicly, even though she is married and even though she is in her 40s! It is her battle, her pain, her story and above all, her journey!