TANZANIA – Singer Diamond Platnumz has revealed that he knew his biological father, Salum Iddi Nyange, since 2000.
The award-winning Tanzanian artiste made the revelation on Thursday, January 28, when he spoke on Wasafi FM.
His remarks come two weeks after his mother, Sanura Kassim, alias Bi Sandra, first revealed that Abdul Juma, who was initially known to be the biological father of the singer, wasn’t actually Diamond’s blood dad.
Sandra made the announcement during a live phone call on Wasafi FM on January 15.
Until yesterday (Thursday), Diamond, 31, hadn’t spoken publicly about his mother’s revelations.
“In the year 2000, the mother of my half-brother, Romy Jones, suggested that my father was Salum Iddi Nyange, who owned a cereal shop in Tandale. One time, she told me: ‘Go to the market in Tandale, and ask for one Salum Nyange, who is your father, and tell him to give you rice’. I went as advised, met Nyange, and informed him that I had been told he was my father. He, thereafter, gave me rice costing Tsh200 (Ksh10), and told me to take it home,” Diamond Platnumz said.
“At the time, Nyange and my mother were not close. However, my regular visits to Nyange’s shop resulted in the two getting close.”
The heavy-hitter said his father and mother, subsequently, organised a meeting between him and his other blood siblings Ricardo Momo and Iddi Santus.
Diamond said the siblings lived with their father in Kariakoo.
“We (the siblings) co-existed so well. I would leave Tandale for Kariakoo often. We loved each other so much. All that while, being a child, I was wondering which family was indeed mine; was it the one with Abdul as my father, or Nyange as my father?” said Diamond Platnumz.
The musician said he got clarity on the matter four months ago, when his mother told him that his biological father was Nyange, and not Abdul. Nyange died in 2004.
“Mum showed me Nyange’s pictures, and upon looking at them, I was convinced that I looked more like Nyange than Abdul.”
Bi Sandra, in the interview with Wasafi mid-January, said she kick-started a relationship with Mzee Abdul Juma in 1989, when she was already pregnant by Nyange. She was carrying Diamond Platnumz in her womb at the time.
Diamond Platnumz, in a past interview, claims Mzee Abdul abandoned him and her mother when he was 6 years old.
“There was a time Mzee Abdul was ailing, and when I went to visit him, his mother sent me away. There was a day his mother said I was hoping Mzee Abdul could die so that I inherit his property. It got me thinking: ‘why was I hated by Mzee Abdul’s family, yet I was loved by Mzee Nyange’s family’?”
Diamond said despite not being close with Mzee Abdul, he often helped him financially, something that angered Bi Sandra.
“She would say I was helping a man who spoke ill about me in media interviews.”
After Bi Sandra revealed that Diamond was not Mzee Abdul’s child, the elderly man, in several media interviews, said he was shocked to learn that a child he believed he had sired, was actually fathered by another man.
“I am shocked because all through, I never knew that Bi Sandra moved in with me while pregnant by another man. I now want Diamond Platnumz to drop all my names from his official birth certificates,” said Mzee Abdul.
