Fans of renowned gospel singer Tumisang ‘Dr Tumi’ Makweya have claimed the R500,000 payment he received from the Gauteng department of sports, arts, culture and recreation is ‘way too little’ for a televised prayer service concert. Dr Tumi was allegedly paid R500,000 by the department for organizing a two-hour virtual prayer service that attracted more than 1,700 viewers on YouTube.
This was after the gospel singer proposed the service in March last year because spirits in the country were low when the Covid-19 pandemic hit the country. The Lockdown Worshipwas also aired by DStv channel GauTV. Dr Tumi told the publication R166,000 was spent on a sound engineer, two camera operators, a lighting technician and an outdoor broadcasting van.
“We called it a lockdown worship. It was a TV production and we streamed part of it. TV productions take long and there were others with me. A further R150,000 was paid for the performers and R33,000 for pre-production costs. Other amounts were R29,000 for marketing, R52,000 on management costs, and R64,000 in VAT. There are a lot of lockdown TV shows going around and I can tell you they are costly,” Dr Tumi said.
The lineup included Benjamin Dube, Lebogang Sekgobela, Takie Ndou, Stephen Lungu and Palm Sefako. Although not much was revealed about how much ended up in Dr Tumi’s bank account, social media took to Twitter to express their views that the gospel singer was “underpaid” for such a concert.
