By Correspondent
Zimura, an institution tasked with caring for the country’s most beautiful voices, is currently singing out of tune.
For months, the royalty collection organisation has been drawing negative headlines, with longstanding fights centred around governance.
Board members have been locked in a war of words, and any efforts at reconciliation have failed.
The issues, involved parties say, go beyond personal matters and concern the future of the music business in Zimbabwe.
In the fight for the organisation’s soul, some have been arrested, a board has been dissolved, and the government has somehow embedded itself in the affairs of a voluntary organisation.
A lasting solution still seems elusive, as the two sides are convinced they are standing on solid ground.
Although it is manifesting today, the tension around Zimura’s operations has always existed, maybe spanning over two decades.
Who is Zimura?
The Zimbabwe Music Rights Association is a membership-based organisation founded in 1982.
It self-defines as a Collecting Society registered under the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act.
The organisation draws its membership from composers, musicians, producers and other creatives in the music value chain.
According to the organisation’s website, their mandate is to “provide comprehensive protection for musical works, sound, recordings and related rights in Zimbabwe.”
One of the key activities in the fulfilment of this mandate is collecting royalties from radio stations, venues, bars and business establishments.
Annually, Zimura collects an average of USD 1 million, part of which covers its operational costs and is shared among artists on a pro-rata basis.
As things stand, artists are not happy with what they are getting from the collection body.
What are the pressing issues now?
At the heart of the Zimura noise is a property located in Avondale, Harare.
This property, a residential flat converted into an office, was sold, according to the previous board members, with a view to helping raise money for a bigger office. It was no longer conducive to work from there, they said.
However, allegations are that the sale was handled through a real estate agency where one of the sitting board members worked.
Following member pressure, the sale was reversed. The buyer was refunded, and Zimura got back the flat, which, according to the report,s had been sold for less than its expected market value.
The property issue was just a symptom of what appears to be a bigger problem.
Musicians allege that Zimura’s administrative costs take more than they should.
Numbers from the Zimura 2024 audit show that staff costs stood at $575,756, while artists’ royalties were $475,650.
The company’s Finance Officer, Shelly Chaunoita, told Parliament that the organisation spends about $33 000 per month on salaries for its 41 employees.
Musician Chillmaster, who had one of the best breakout years in 2025 with over five songs on heavy rotation,n received less than $800 from Zimura.
Judging from the numbers, it is better to be a Zimura employee than to be a leading musician in Zimbabwe.
Enter Government
Warts and all, Zimura remains a voluntary entity. It is not a statutory body, established through a by-law, statutory instrument or act of parliament.
Despite this seemingly autonomous standing, the government has repeatedly found itself somehow embedded in the inner workings of the organisation.
Deputy Minister of ICT, Dingumuzi Phuti, sits on the current board. Phuti himself is a musician, but one can be forgiven for thinking he represents government interests in all his official functions.
With the growing turbulence within the institution, the government eventually intervened officially.
In April, the government dissolved the Zimura board, citing poor governance and a lack of fiduciary responsibility.
This was to be followed by an interim appointed board to bring the institution back to ‘normalcy’.
What this coded language meant was government would select cadres to patriotically lead Zimura.
This move has since been challenged. Members of one faction of the Zimura board, First Farai, Goodchild and Evelyn Moyo, approached the High Court challenging the decision by the government.
Responding to their application, the High Court stayed the decision to dissolve the board.
This suspended the decision by the government, reinstating the three applicants, First Farai, Goodchild and Evelyn Moyo.
While the full judgment has not yet been made public, the position by the High Court gives glimmers of hope around preserving the autonomy of voluntary organisations from government interference.
Non-profits, trusts and voluntary organisations find themselves in unenviable times with the new Public Voluntary Organisation (PVO) Act.
This debacle if not managed well, could easily become a testing ground for some of the contentious clauses in the Act, especially one where the government can order the takeover of the management of non-profits where there is suspected mismanagement.
Zimura members, musicians, must be allowed to solve their issues no matter how contentious.
What can be done to clean the house?
Zimura can be rescued.
There is a need for a back-to-basics approach in the manner in which the organisation is structured.
Since the institution has been in existence since 1982, there is enough data and evidence to guide the decision-making on where things have gone wrong.
If approached with honesty, the process can rescue the organisation because there is no better place to learn from than one’s past.
Zimura is not a novel type of organisation; almost every country has a body that does the same thing.
The issues confronting Zimura presently have been faced by peer organisations, especially in the region and have been dealt with.
Solutions
It could simply be an issue of engaging and exchanging ideas with colleagues, especially on matters that are applicable in different jurisdictions.
Additionally, Zimura needs to think beyond radio stations and perhaps direct their thoughts towards the digital space.
This may be the best time to consider setting up a digital platform, where people can subscribe to access Zimbabwean music online. While other platforms like Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube exist, the archive is not as rich, especially for yesteryear musicians.
There is an opportunity for Zimura as an organisation with a pulse on Zimbabwean music since as far back as the early 1980s, to create a system they can manage and whose efficiency they can then control from A to Z.
Unless there are other intricate issues hidden from the public eye, at face value, it appears that the issues at Zimura can be curable with a little bit of deliberateness.
For now, what obtains is a war of words which appears to be approaching legal territory.
They say iron sharpens iron; maybe the confrontations will result in better conditions for musicians. Only time will tell.
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