After a very eventful week in which two most prominent music figures won Awards at Vision 2016 and President’s Awards I want to believe and agree that these two gentlemen have served this country and paid their dues and the awards have been given to people befitting the stature of those awards.
But one may ask what can these two gentlemen show/derive from those Awards/Statues/Certificates? What do those awards mean to them, their colleagues and the nation at large? To me Awards should be meant to recognize one’s talent, contribution to a course and uplift the status of the recipient amongst people surrounding that particular person. I am hoping these awards will serve just that to these two wise men – Andries Bok and Alfred Mosimanegape.
While Andries is a poor and broken man, it is imperative for us as the music industry to do something for him to celebrate this award. We have to go to his home village and organize a big feast from our pockets. We should not request anything from the Ministry and Minister of Youth, Sports and Culture. As an industry we should desist from becoming beggars,. We should start doing things on our own, like we used to before. This will remind today’s musicians of the days when their forebears used to stage shows all over the country, tour, record and sell albums before the era of high piracy and limited music concert hours. By us doing something on our own we will shed bad tags, which we have been labelled by some manipulative people as “greedy people”.
As for Alfred Mosimanegape I still don’t understand the award he won, how he won it and what prize money came with it? As B.O.M.U. President I know that Alfred has a long rich musical history than most of us and has paved the way for so many musicians like Slizer and Franco who were his backing artists in their early years. I know Alfred as a man who tries to help other people all the time. He can chase a music pirate until he faints. But I will be shocked if he decided to take the prize money from the award and keep it in his pocket. As poor as Alfred might be, he must take the prize money and donate it towards a charitable course because the Vision 2016 Awards are about the good that one has done. Or else Vision 2016 council must come up with a rule where an award winner donates his winnings to a charitable organisation of their choice.
Thuzoski on RB1, raised a topic last Wednesday on how can the music industry could be developed to become locally and globally competitive? The answers are in everyone’s lips, head, mind and straight and forward. The industry needs a regulatory organization in the form on the National Arts Council which from 1971 the arts fraternity has been proposing.
Once Botswana has an Arts Council issues of policies, strategies, funding, capacity building e.t.c. will be addressed. If we want to export our music to other countries, we must first start at home where the piracy level is currently very high. Piracy level must first be reduced through legal and aggressive public education campaigns then our artists will get a favourable local market share as opposed to now where Musica and other South African chain stores operating in Botswana are making hundreds of thousands and exporting money to South Africa while strictly selling foreign music in Botswana. Secondly there is a need for a development plan for the Arts just like in Sport where there is the Elite Sports Scholarship program, which sports personalities are sent to school by govt some of the beneficiaries being Dipsy Selolwane and others who have been a great success, there is a need to also bring Cubans to train musicians, send musicians for training in Cuba just like in Sports e.t.c. There is a need to develop the Arts in Schools of Excellence program. This will in the long run build the capacity of the industry. You can’t have schools of excellence that deal with Sports only thus sidelining a majority of youth that might be interested in the Arts.
Two months ago I went to Bontleng where I grew up and I had a little session with one of the Old School Jazz and Sports fan Bra Big-boy Matlhakela who told me that the reason why the music industry will never grow is because there is a need to bring in people with Music Industry issues at heart at decision making level in Govt. He asked me what could happen if Keletso Rakhudu could become the Minister of Youth, Sports and Culture? He made mention that in yester-years The Minister of Youth, Sports and Culture was a prolific Softball player and if Botswana was at the level of the US probably he would have played baseball for New York Nicks or Sox. He went on to mention that the success of the Zebras and other Athletes should not only be credited to coaches e.t.c. but political will as the Minister is up to date on sports matters. A typical example is on the current tax holiday on sports sponsorships while music sponsorships are taxed.
For us to have artists getting Certificate at the President’s Honour Awards and receiving an award similar to Dipsy’s and Stan Tshosane’s we need to have an Assistant Minister like Keletso Rakhudu (Who is a musician) or Philip Makgalemela (Who was once a music promoter) to deal strictly with issues of the Arts and Youth.
This will fast track all issues that are still way behind when it comes to development of the Arts in Botswana. Once you have political will and support nothing can go wrong an example being sports since the President started attending and hosting dinners/private events for Zebras during the Vaselin and Rowe era the national team started to perform better. This is because the corporate sector tends to spin money where they feel the President may have an interest, with the hope of getting tenders, favourable trading conditions and milking the goodwill of the elder statesman. This is not a wrong practice but a norm across the world.
We need to have comprehensive plans from both govt, private and civil societies on how we want to progress on these issues. One other major obstacle is lack of venues/performance arenas. There is a serious need for Govt to convert old Stadiums in F/Town and Lobatse into outdoor Music Arenas. We need to upgrade some of our venue like the Gaborone Civic Centre, which can be renovated to a standard where it can host international events as it has a historic and geographical advantage.
The govt together with the music industry should agree to come up with a program along “Re ba bona Ha” which will mainly target grassroots development of the arts as well become a feeder to the Constituency and Heritage Day Competitions so that annually the competition gets a fresh inflow of talent.
