ZBC in breach debt payment agreement?

World-wide, the issue of performing rights over songs created by songwriters has been a matter of litigation. It is however an established principle in most societies that owners of copyrighted material retain the right to profit from their intellectual property.
Performing rights societies are given the mandate to administer that right on behalf of the authors and composers. This administration entails the issuing of licenses and collection of royalties to and from would be users of members’ works by third parties. In Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Musicians Rights Association carries this mantle. The organisation represents artistes alive and deceased the ilk of Tuku, Andy Brown, Macheso, Shingisai Suluma (President Robert Mugabe’s favourite gospel singer) and Jah Prayzer.
In my hands are copies of the judgment and payment plans signed by both Zimbabwe Music Rights Association (ZIMURA) and the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) (Pvt) Ltd. The matter of ZBC’s liability is now a settled one. They are liable to pay over US$700 000 which is the judgment award plus interests and costs. This amount should never have escalated to that much. It should have been a simple matter of lawyers drafting payment plans and sparing the courts from frivolities. The right of authors and composers to exploit their intellectual property profitably should be clear even to simpletons and to novice law students such as this writer. Especially in such a case where there was a  pre-existing agreement between the litigants that certified and specified obligations. “My brother this is a victory (the dismissed appeal and payment agreement) that we have been crying for. Ours is the hunger and anguish we feel when we hear that executives at ZBC are buying and driving posh cars at our expense,” spoke an artist based in Bulawayo on condition of anonymity at the time of the release of the judgment outcome to members .
Now, copyright holders in the country who may have been gleefully awaiting pay day twiddling their thumbs may have to wait a bit longer as ZBC appears to carry on with impunity in open defiance of a court order and in breach of their own judgment debtor payment plan. The due date for payment of the first tranche of  US$100 000 plus interest of over US$5 000 for March and April according to the judgment debtor’s (ZBC) payment plan was April 29, 2013. “The director cannot take the call as she is not in right now and she will comment,” said a Mr Makombe who is the head of licensing at ZIMURA when contacted for comment over the issue. Pressed on the way forward for the organisation Makombe could only say, “We will have to engage our lawyers on the way forward.”
Broadcasting stations such as ZBC must accept that their programming is heavily reliant on the works of songwriters whose music is daily churned out through the airwaves. Their programming attracts the advertisers who bring in money to their coffers. They charge clients for their services. In turn, performing rights management associations such as ZIMURA must be paid in order to pay their members. It is and should be a sweet enough deal for all concerned. It is befuddling for ZBC to have pussy footed around this issue for as long as they have. This is how the capitalist system works – you pay for services rendered to you as per agreement. Except that the radio stations occasionally play truant and begrudge the holders of copyrighted works their dues.
The Zimbabwe Music Rights Association’s victory in the High Court and in the subsequent appeal by ZBC against the award of the contested sum of money with costs of over US$700 000 to member songwriters, serves a powerful             warning to other fledgling broadcasters and individuals that the law will no longer brook the         preceding nonsense where struggling artistes were being robbed with impunity of the just reward for their works. Star FM and ZiFM are the latest additions to the market. Of course the judgment has laid a precedent that makes it imperative for these new players to toe the proverbial line.
 At the time of going to press it was not yet clear from either side that ZBC had made good on its own signed judgment debtor payment plan. It is difficult to see how ZBC hopes to escape its liability, if at all that is its wish. The organisation must either pay or the sheriff will have to have his way.