‘Sources’ claim Zahara is ‘back in rehab’

Tabloid paper Sunday Sun revealed today that singer-songwriter Zahara went back to rehab on Tuesday.

The paper alleged that she was “back on the booze – big time” and it based this on three “highly placed sources” who claimed that she had relapsed following an outpatient rehab programme.

Her management team was allegedly concerned that any time out would affect her heavily booked schedule. One source said that “they did not know what was going to happen next”.

Another source said she was hanging out with “the wrong crowd” and it was very saddening.

The rehab apparently doesn’t come cheap either, with the bills allegedly running into the hundreds of thousands of rands. The source pointed out that Zahara’s breakdown may have had something to do with social media mocking her for her “strange” pictures. She had not been active on Twitter since then.

You can read about that here. At the time, The Citizen suggested that she might need help, but that had more to do with her hiring a social media manager or online publicist, not anything related to alleged substance addiction.

One source said Zahara needed to “lean on her family for support – not industry blood suckers who are posing as her friends”.

Zahara became a sensation nearly overnight when her debut album Loliwe sold more than 300 000 units. She won numerous awards thereafter.

Her producer, Robbie Malinga, told the tabloid that he knew nothing about “the rehab story”. He dismissed it all as lies. The co-owner of her record label, TK Nciza, also professed complete ignorance of the rumours.

Oddly enough, the website iJOBURG has asked the question, based on nothing much apparently, of whether Zahara is suicidal. Although one source told Sunday Sun that Zahara had taken the killing of her brother in a shooting incident very badly, this may be yet another example of little more than a rumour getting out of control very quickly.