After 28 years, Tich Mataz is back on South Africa radio

After 28 years, Tich Mataz is back on South Africa radio

It has taken 28 years but Tich Mataz is back on South African radio.

He starts his shift on Channel Africa, the international broadcasting service arm of SABC radio, TOMORROW.

Last night Tich Mataz confirmed to H-Metro that he was back on South African radio.

“It’s true man,” he said. “I’m starting on April 1.”

Naturally, he was happy to be back on a landscape where he made his name, on the international front, before his empire came crashing down.

His re-engagement comes exactly 28 years after he was deported from South Africa.

He was deported on March 24, 1998.

Back then, Tich Mataz was one of the hottest names on South African radio and he says he was a MILLIONAIRE, in United States dollars.

He was one of the poster boys of the buzzing entertainment scene as South Africa celebrated its Independence.

That was 1995.

The Rainbow Nation had been born, just a year earlier, and Tich Mataz was one of the stars providing the motion picture soundtrack as an entire nation was dancing to the rhythm of its Independence.

The walls of apartheid had fallen and there were opportunities everywhere for those who were daring to dream big.

Tich Mataz was one of those people.

The Springboks won the Rugby World Cup at home, defeating their biggest rivals the All Blacks 15-12 after extra-time, to send the Rainbow Nation into delirium.

There were 25 top-of-the-range cars in his garage, at least nine immovable properties on his real estate portfolio and a nightclub in Rosebank where the rich and famous of the new nation used to meet and spend big.

“I was a millionaire in USD terms,” Tich Mataz told H-Metro.

In the past thirty years he has was playing on the local club circuit as a DJ, which is what he used to do at the beginning before he became a big star on Radio 3, which is now Power FM, and moving into South Africa.

“In South Africa I had won some big contracts and had lots of businesses,” he said.

“I was working with major corporates.

“You will recall that Reebok was until then predominantly white and sport in South Africa was beginning to open up and breaking into the blacks’ market.

“They wanted some blacks who would help them break into that market and I became part of that team.

“I think it was God’s blessing for me to become the first major black personality on a white radio station, I was on radio, TV, I had a night club and I had real estate.

“I was just lucky, I think, to be at the right place at the right time.

“I had a fashion house, restaurants and a lot of other things.

“There is this misconception that I was just a DJ but I was a businessman.”

On the Denny J podcast, Tich Mataz put all that into context.

“When I first left Zimbabwe, I was getting paid maybe Z$2,000 and when I went to South Africa my first pay was R15,000.

“Remember I was a businessman as well.

“I had a communications company, Khulumani Communications, which handled a lot of corporate communications there, I had an investment company, I had a nightclub, I was doing some big deals at government level, I was buying some fancy cars.

“At one time, and it was stupid of me, I had like 25 brand new cars.

“I went to Jamaica just to see where Bob Marley had been born, I went to his shrine, his museum because I had the money.

“I went to see Michael Jackson do his last official concert, the History Tour in Prague, I was there.

“Before I met Michael Jackson in Zimbabwe, I met him there.

“So, I was really privileged to do some crazy things when I was young.’

But his world came crashing down when he was deported in March 1998 after being accused of living in South Africa illegally. *_-H-Metro_*