For the past year and maybe even beyond that, ZIMURA is an organisation that hasn’t been far from the headlines, and not for the best of reasons. As things stand ZIMURA is having more scandals than royalty disbursements and that doesn’t bode well for an organisation whose core business is to represent Zimbabwe’s musicians. So much so it’s raising the question whether they are truly custodians or opportunists?
For those who don’t know, ZIMURA is the Zimbabwe Music Rights Association, an organisation created for the purpose of protecting and promoting the rights of musicians in Zimbabwe. It has been in operation for over 40 years and it has over 6,000 members. It’s main day to day operation is the collecting of royalties on behalf of musicians.
Now why has it been in the news?
While it has longstanding issues that has it in the papers, ZIMURA drew the spotlight early last year when it announced a cover band tariff of $150 (per performance). There was widespread outcry from establishments, arts organisations and artists themselves. The Zimbabwe Musicians Union in particular took them head on, and the situation quickly drew the attention of the National Arts Council Of Zimbabwe (NACZ).
The NACZ ordered ZIMURA to immediately cancel the cover band fee and regularise its registration under them. This then revealed ZIMURA’s grey area existence. The organisation defied the arts council and revealed that it was a nonprofit private company with a mandate under the Ministry of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs.
While technically legal the organisation’s structure makes for incongruences within the arts sector. How can the NACZ execute its mandate of overseeing the arts sector when an organisation handling the matters of musicians (one the biggest constituents in the arts sector) is said to not answer to them?
To resolve the cover band fee situation, the Ministry of Justice itself had to intervene, and ZIMURA didn’t dare defy them. However this was just the beginning of the organisation making the headlines. Halfway through the year Polisile Ncube-Chimhini, who is said to be the association’s executive director, was found guilty of fraud.
Furthermore the High Court, in the case of Farai Fred Nyakudanga versus Polisile Ncube-Chimhini, ruled that ZIMURA has no executive director position under its articles of association and that she holds no executive authority within the organisation. Yet she has continued to operate in that position and that is at the centre of the organisation’s current drama.
Three members of the organisation’s 6 person board have publicly accused the organisation’s leadership and secretariat of deep-seated governance failures, conflicts of interest and financial mismanagement.
In a press conference ZIMURA board spokesperson Mr Dereck Mpofu, and board members Gift Amuli and Joseph Garakara, laid out gross violations of corporate governance that included the unsanctioned sale of property, board capture, and the operation of a predatory financial model that sees management salaries prioritised over royalty distributions to artists.
This ties in to a revelation from a few months ago that showed that ZIMURA executives were receiving monthly salaries in the thousands, while artists were barely getting that in annual royalty disbursements.
The question to be asked now is whether ZIMURA stands for artists or just its pockets?
The Zimbabwe Musicians Union described it as a predatory scheme that has inflicted significant damage on the music industry with 43 years of destructive practices, and so far it is not dispelling that.
In light of the most recent scandal the organisation seems to be carrying on its operations “unbothered.” In a 6 hour long meeting held yesterday, while several board members were accusing the organisation of mismanagement, the association voted in a new chairperson and vice chairperson; de-facto spliting the association into two.
However it might be time the association was changed as a whole, or time we should embraced an alternative?
ZICCO, Zimbabwe Council of Copyrights, has been in battle with ZIMURA over the royalties space. The organisation has been making bold moves aimed at reforming royalty distribution in the country’s creative sector, seeking to rectify long-standing imbalances that have disadvantaged emerging artists.
If ZIMURA continues down its current path, it might just give the moment they need to takeover the space. What is evident though is that something has to change.
