WAIT A MINUTE – HOLOGRAMS WILL REDUCE PIRACY IN ZAMBIA!

I find Mailo Zulu’s statement asserting that hologram is a big flop premature, narrow and unfounded. His statement was retrogressive and raise a lot of question about his motive i.e. piracy has killed the music and film industry and every well meaning artist should support the first ever mechanism devised by our government to fight piracy –logic!

Let us put this argument in context;

What is piracy?

Piracy simply is the illegal duplication of products without express permission from the author/artist/manufacturer/owner. Piracy is theft.

In the case of CDs/DVDs, how does piracy kill the local music and film industry?

Pirates have no regard for quality or the moral conscience to consult, buy publishing rights or engage to benefit the artist/producer. They produce a poor product (CD/DVD) without regard for quality hence their costs are low, and in turn vend their ‘fake’ products at a price cheaper than the price of the original product. On the market, the cheap pirated CDs/DVD make it impossible for the artists, whose costs of production are high and will sell at a higher price.

When the markets are flooded with cheap products, the shelf life of an original becomes longer thus crippling the local industry.

For instance, for films produced on DVDs, locally to produce movies on DVDs, the local artist or producer will spend about K10.00 per DVD and will maybe sell at K15.00 or K20.00 given the harsh economic situation affecting our people, whereas the pirate will have his stuff produced cheaply (Making production short cuts in disregard for quality) and will start to sell the same product at even half the price, making it impossible for the owners of the product to sell!

Because of this frustrating situation where people can illegally reproduce a product with no law to countercheck, proceeds of music or movies on DVD/CD to artist have been deemed impossible.

How does the Hologram work to reduce piracy of CDs/DVDs?

The hologram is a unique ‘stamp’ issued by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Copyright unit on all legal products (CD/DVDs) registered by the owners of the publishing rights. With this law, all products without the hologram are deemed as fake, pirated, illegal. This ‘stamp’ make it possible for law enforcers to monitor and raid all products  that do not have the hologram, the small fee of K1.00 per Holgogram/CD/DVD levied ensures that the police, MoIB and ZRA have the financial muscle to monitor piracy and conduct raids, the law stops the importation of products without the hologram at all borders and entry points and it helps the consumers to differentiate or distinguish an original product from a fake one.

In an environment (as will be the case in the next few weeks) where the hologram is in full effect and the country has been rid of all pirated CDs/DVDs, the producers and publishers will have the power to set their own price, make money from sell of their art on DVD or CD and have enough money buy equipment and set up facilities to set up studios to improve their product.

The success of the Hologram means the resuscitation or in fact the birth of the music and film industries!

It means that artists will not be reduced to burgers doing shows at night clubs for K500.00 ($100), It means that their works will have value and value invariably comes with quality.

What does the Hologram project mean for the country?

The government is not getting much from the big informal sector of DVD or CDs sales because it is currently a black market with ghost and untraceable players. Hologram means regulation and formalization of the media (Music and Films) publishing business in Zambia.

Fill in the blanks…

Is the Hologram the one and only answer to piracy?

NO!

The hologram is the answer to ‘physical piracy’ in this context pirated DVDs and CDs but not cyber piracy. Cyber piracy is slightly more complicated than DVDs and CDs because music and movies can be easily shared through flash drives or Internet downloads. But and a BIG BUT the hologram empowers the Intellectual Property Unit of the Zambia Police with funds to devise mechanism to curb cyber crime and so lets take one step at time, after all a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush!

Conclusion

In this complex age, there is no one answer to piracy; it takes concerted efforts and a multi-faceted approach to the problem i.e. attitude change by the consumers, hologram, consisted raids on pirated products, tight border controls to reduce smuggling, innovative measures to reduce on internet downloads of non royalty free products and so on and so on…. Perhaps Mr. Maiko Zulu can add to the list!

Constraints of Local Film and Television Producers in Growing Capacity and Providing High Quality Local Content– Open letter to ZNBC DG Chibamba Kanyama

The Government of the Republic of Zambia, through its Ministry of Information and Broadcasting responded to calls for a new TV channel that would be used to create a platform for local film and television producers, create additional air space for commercials messages and to generally decongest the main ZNBC channel, hence the advent of TV2.

The launch of this second broadcast channel under the auspices of ZNBC was well received among the film and television society seeing as for the first time in a long time, the public broadcaster ZNBC was commissioning local producers and thus created employment opportunities for the youth.

In proceeding months, there was an influx of production houses and local content flooding the channels, the broadcaster successfully creating capacity and began to harness the local film industry.

With the passing of time, the local film and television society were horrified to learn that the then Commissioning Editor Henry Ngilazi had been relieved of his duties and they had every reason because his replacement was a Mampi Musweu.

In the months that followed, commissioned content was cut and producers sent back to the streets, languishing in poverty and depression. The few producers who remained have all since been frustrated with the exception of the ‘elite’ few.

Reasons given were that the cost of the local content is high compared to the price at which the corporation was acquiring foreign content. Worse off, there were some producers were advanced funds by the broadcaster but have not delivered the desired quality to date.

Granted, most of the content that was on air was poor, however there were a few producers that did produce quality content despite the tight budgets on offer. 

Most of the cream of Zambian film producers have since weaned off commissioning with ZNBC opting for private funded independent film productions and other commercial productions i.e. music videos, TV commercial and sponsored TV content.

In the midst of the radical shift in perspective came an outcry in the film and television society with the likes of Chala Tumelo producer of the famous TV Series ‘Loose Ends’ shouting from the roof top while most of us cowardly whispered our indignation the dark corners for fear of persecution and abuse.

As time went on, we heard of how many people where horrified by their commissioning experience with ZNBC and how they felt that the Commissioning Editor was not as inspiring as the former, that they in fact felt demoralized.

Many in fact went on to conjure various theories, often questioning how a film academic without significant film making experience and one who is understood to have a vested interest being an upcoming film and television producer himself, was given this weighty responsibility to manage important affairs such as commissioning.

It was perhaps a capital mistake for me to ignore calls for his removal and not to support the campaign to have him transferred to another department and replaced with someone impartial, qualified, experienced and suitable with and no vested interests.

Having come into close proximity with Mampi Musweu, I have come to learn with deep shock and disappointment that he inexperience; lack of knowledge, tented reputation among filmmakers is in the way of progress. It is the reason why most prominent and respected film and television producers have shunned the commissioning office leaving ZNBC with no choice but to continuously air foreign content on both channels in preference to export quality local productions.

Shame!

Mampi Musweu is the reason why ZNBC have not been able to attract high quality local content that the TV license paying Zambian public grieve for, he is the reason why we have been denied an opportunity to share our stories and celebrate our culture in our own country! Twachula pafula!

We must be careful now and make responsible decisions as a country. Ignoring the obvious and allowing foreign content to reign over local content is hazardous to the development of our country at so many levels.

If left unchecked, the prevailing situation where the local film and television producers continue to be frustrated by the antics of an individual and the foreign content is promoted ahead of our own, not only we risk inhibiting the growth of an industry with the potential to create thousands of jobs for the youth but we will also ultimately lose a sense of pride and identity as a nation!

Foolish Tribal Zambia?

If you are from the Eastern Province and you are reading this you may need some pain killers, but then if I were you I would quickly take comfort in the fact that I come from a region so many of these traditions which I deem irrelevant in this day and age.

Aside from handling placements for clients wishing to advertise during these many traditional ceremonies believe it or not I find really hard to watch them or even be involved। Somehow, I found myself in front of the television ZNBC while visiting my mother over the weekend. With all the buzz that surrounds these ceremonies, you can’t help but notice.

You know for a long time now, I have been telling some of my comrades about how I feel that one of the biggest barriers this country has in as far as developing is concerned are tribes. To put it quite plainly, I feel that having 72 tribes is a mere waste and a big barrier to progress.

If you have read the good book, you will know that there is story about Babel, humankind wanted to build the tallest tower ever, perhaps reaching heaven. They were so united in this quest yet they couldn’t make it. Do you know why? Because they were cursed with languages, tribes. This was extremely detrimental to their quest so much such that confusion, jealousy and strife broke due to the fact they were not speaking one language.

Now Michael Sata is busy every available Bemba to some fancy position and the Lozi’s are busy championing a lost cause. Imagine if this situation, this energy was used for a greater cause! Imagine if we did not have any tribal barriers in this country? Imagine the togetherness, the unity, the progress! For all you know we would build the tallest building that couldn’t even reach heaven!

It is about time that we got read of all these tribal sentiments, empty and unfounded traditions. One would mistake the ncwala for a Dracula ritual of some sort where women dance naked and full grown men hit the ground for reason at all, and to top it all a chief who drinks blood. Come on? Why are we so proud of the past? Why can’t we be proud of the future? Imagine if we turned that Ncwala or indeed the other ceremonies into progressive things like a science fare, were the great minds from eastern province would showcase their inventions. Trust me we would go to the moon by 2018!

Just a thought, instead of the Litunga paddling every year, he could use a helicopter designed by the genius people of Western province. Instead of the people of North Western province being amused by the Makishi and the cutting of foreskins, how about they use the rich solid and good rainfall they have to feed the nation? What say you?

Zambia would just be a better place if instead of ‘being proud of our so called rich history’, we utilize all the talents we have in being the greatest nation on earth. How does throwing your crops in some ritualistic river help you?

We have so many many problems as a country! A President with a knack of renaming things, I hope Ban Kimun has not been renamed. A bumper harvest year after year but the price of meali meal remains the same. 40% of water in Southern Africa but we wait for the rains to cultivate.

What nonsense!

The Morning After

‘This has to count as the worst long weekend ever’, I said to myself, I soon had to chew my own words. So here we are in Chilanga with a couple of new friends or mates whatever you chose to call them. We are in a truck or at least this Nissan Pajero sure does look like one. Now if you have been to Chilanga, you will surely agree with me that a place called Hakuna Kulala is a place that really does inspire a drinking bout. Im telling myself that perhaps I shouldn’t think about the beer but trust me my throat isn’t helping me in anyway.

What am I to do? Okay, since I’m pretty much everybody’s friend here, I begin to elicit what is to be ‘like Barney from “How I met your Mother” would say, legen-dery’, a few two somes for each of the guys perhaps. Somehow they all fall for it and believe that I can make things happen for them, I don’t how I always get to do this.

So here we are, all four guys, my good friend who I won’t name because he is a deacon at church, but I’m sure some of you know who he is and two new people that I just met at Arcades the other day, and by the way, we are all pretending to be very good friends. Okay at least we have one thing in common; we all want to have drinks and chicks to go with them.

This is like Mingeli’s bad company at its best here eh, so I decide to get everybody a portion of grilled goat or michopo and I tell everyone that they haven’t tested good michipo until they taste what is on these brown papers. We are getting the party starting…. Okay now this is too much, the six pack of Heineken that we bought from Lusaka is now down and the guys really want buzz, in the meantime I’m on my phone trying to text the girls that I promised the guys.

I guess the pressure is too much and one of the guys decides that he will just have to use whatever moneys he has to ensure that the boys get a lege’ndery night as it were and that’s how we started drinking and the night led us to places we never imagined.

We had a gas!

Well, it’s that time again, you know time when you don’t even want to check how much is in your pockets? Yep. The morning after. I wake up in some bed. Our company is gone and there are quite a number of lines of Paul’s face. I think I may know what the problem is.

Being the nice guy that I’m (Self praise) I decide to ask the poor fellow what the problem is. He says its nothing so I quickly say my good byes and I tell the guys not to bother with taking me home since I leave just a few blocks away.

Well, I bet that chap is now broke, thanks to the pressure of the long weekend, with what gain, I don’t know. I have been down this road on a number of occasions and even hell knows the way it’s like. You spend all your money on beers for the guys and the girls whose names you don’t even recall the next day and then you feel the pinch afterwards.

The truth is, ,maybe some of us don’t have as much as we should because we are always spending the little we earn to appease our friends every weekend and long holiday.

Did you know the poor spend more than the rich? Food for thought yah!

How do I know this isn’t cutting it? I receive a call from the guy that bought beers for us asking me for a K10, 000.00 to get him to work- tse tse tse! I’m such bad company, avoid me!

नोट उन्तिल आईटी हप्पेंस तो YOU

Its an awfully beautiful Sunday afternoon, regular visitors to my house would he surprised to see me here and this is not only because I rarely spend my Sundays home but also because I am here in the front house trying to do up the landscape. It’s such a peaceful sight yet the same cannot be said about what is going on in my mind. Dear friends the thing is, when you watch the news and see kids that have been molested, like in my case, it doesn’t really make any sense until it happens to one of your own.

Allow me to take you back to that fateful and most recent Friday night, naturally after a long week I would link up with a couple of friends around our lovely Lusaka to hide somewhere in Rhodespark to hear the latest and to simply unwind the week. And so it was on the Friday that I linked up with ‘the usual suspects’ on what started off be to a promising evening. Little did I know that the next few minutes would paint a very grim picture.

I got a call from my little cousin and my first thought was an eminent invitation to one of those salsa dances around town, oh boy how was I wrong. Her message was simple yet thought provoking, ‘you better get home, my dear’. It wasn’t a prank; my kid sister was reported to have been raped. I obviously never really grasped the reality of that message until I got home only to see my aging mother turned into a sorry sight.

This prompted my quick arrival at woodlands Police station where the police officers on duty charged in response to my dismal temperament. Before I realized it, I had four officers at hand to withhold my anger. I looked at my twelve year old sister and couldn’t entertain the fact that some insane men had taken her advantage of her. As I peered deeper in her young eyes, a lot of thoughts came in my mind. I thought about the emotional trauma that this kid was obviously going through, I thought about the possibility of her contracting HIV, I thought about how this experience would affect her sexuality in future. Trust me; you wouldn’t want to be in my shoes.

The night earned itself some credit as the worst night ever such that as I made my way to the children’s section of the University of Zambia, I didn’t know whether it was more important for me to be angry with the culprits or to sympathize with my kid sister. I could deploy all my available resources to making sure that the culprits have been brought to book but what would that change about my sister’s fate? I have too many questions with but a handful of answers. I guess you just never know, until it happens to one of your own!

RETHINKING THE FOOD SITUATION IN ZAMBIA

It’s only natural that the issue of food is top of the mind for most people and certainly for me, I fail to perform to expected levels when my stomach is not tightly gripped; I choose to believe that most of you share this view. You many not really understand the food crisis in this country until like me you meet the likes of Justin Mwemba, a taxi driver in Lusaka I met the previous week. Aside from struggling to make for his cashing markup, I got to learn that Justin is also father to two and a husband of one wife who lives with his family in Bauleni compound. The man vividly put the deteriorating hunger situation in the country, describing the cost of living and the price of meali meal in particular as unattainable for most average Zambians.

True to the word, in the past year, the issue of meali meal prices has been one of great interest to most Zambians and it was only a few weeks ago when we were told that Zambian will experience a poor harvest this year, alarming isn’t it? Yet this is the order of the day- year after year. The price of meali meal is negatively affected by ill government food administration, low agriculture output as much as it is affected weather patterns.

I need not overstate the fact that Zambia has a special God-given capacity to feed itself and its neighbors seeing as I would like to zero in on a few ideas that could work to solve the food crisis. I may not have the magic solution but I hope that this pierce of writing saves a start to devising workable solutions to address the current crisis.

Despite countless efforts made to urge government to put agriculture on the center stage of their undertakings for both internal food security and foreign exchange purposes, there has been little done in this area. Today agricultural news is still rocked by unattainable fertilizer prices and maize grain price scandals. It is obvious that the system being used to make these much needed agricultural inputs available is not working. And this is not only embarrassing but detrimental to aspirations of ensuring sustainable food security and making Zambia the ultimate food basket in Africa.

Firstly there is a lot of mismanagement, low innovation and lack of priority that characterizes operations at the FRA. In frantic efforts to know what the problem is, I was shocked to learn that both commercial and subsistence farmers find it more profitable to sell the maize to opaque beer brewers or foreign nations rather than the government simply because alcohol brewers for instance offer to buy the grain at double the price. Why can’t government rectify this anomaly? I suggest that deliberate regulation be effected to woo farmers to vend the grain to the FRA by offering attractive prices and terms, and smart economic measures such as high taxation and regulation be effected to discourage farmers from selling their maize to ‘opaque beer brewers’.

Secondly, Government needs to take more deliberate action other than relying on selfish private commercial farmers who would rather sell their maize grain to the Congo than the FRA. I suggest that the state identify key farmers so as to equip and position them in strategic locations for the sole purpose of achieving food security in our beloved country. These strategic state aided farms should be equipped with state of the art farming equipments, inputs, an all season irrigation system that enables winter farming (Tapped from the numerous mighty rivers we are endowed with) and objective government supervision to ensure that food shortages and crazy meali meal prices are a the thing of the past.

Lastly, Zambia also suffers from a self inflicted addiction to maize- somehow we believe that the only thing worth being called food is maize meal- nshima. This is not the case; there are other foodstuffs like rice, cassava, Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, that can supplement maize as the staple food. Government needs to take deliberate action to fight this stereotype and promote other foodstuff to combat hunger in this country. I will give you an example of Cassava, a crop I am most familiar with because my grand mother in Kapompo grows the crop. Cassava is cheap and convenient to grow; it is rich in carbohydrates and will not let you down should your basal metabolic rate be higher than the average Zambian. Yet it is very drought resistant, doesn’t need fertilizer and can grow in various soils with minimum supervision. The advantages that Cassava has over maize are immense and I see no reason why it should not be promoted as a staple food of choice.

We need to see more inspiring deliberate action and more government innovative regulation to ensure that the country has maximum food security so that Justin Mweemba and his family are well fed. This in my view is the government’s primary responsibility and there is no room for excuses.

Education for Today and Tomorrow

It’s every school-leavers huddle, when you finish your grade twelve, its either you are lucky enough to enter any of the three universities, you will have to hope your parents will have enough financial muscle to keep in you in a private college or that maybe somehow by some supernatural intervention- you will fit in the society. Well even if you thought of getting a job, I would say tough luck, especially when even the university graduate does nothing other than roaming the streets while his/her credentials rout on a sitting room wall. Year after year, month after month we cast dozens of school-leavers on the streets with no direction and little hope to a successfully life what so ever. Who doesn’t relate to this?

I need not emphasize the fact that Zambia’s educational system is a shoot in the dark. My assertion is that there is need to conceptualize and design the entire educational system so as to breed successful minds that are armed to address the challenges of the 21st century.

I would like you to tell me what Zambia’s education philosophy is? What is the conceptual backdrop to what kids are being taught in schools? What are we doing to prepare the kids for the competition that exits in today’s globalized world? I am sure you have no answer- my point exactly.

A bit of background to this will be to mention that at independence, Zambia adopted the British education system which was mostly designed to produce ‘office people’, the accountants, managers and lawyers. This particular system created some stereotypes which made office work look more special and the more hands-on type of work more inferior- little wonder this kind of work was left to the natives. Worse off, this system of education was created to address the challenges of 1950s, 60s and 70s and has not been adjusted since then. Today by the time a kid completes grade twelve, he/she is very ill prepared to face the challenges of ‘society’ as school leavers fondly make reference to life after high school. In the present day kids learn is Biology, chemistry and so forth; in my view, these subjects are very impractical and add little value to a child who wants to be a carpenter or a footballer.

If you want the kids to be well grounded and very knowledgeable, all those environmental sciences and a lot of math is only necessary until the kids reach grade 9. But in the finals years of high schools, we need to start preparing the kids for society. Let them specialize in one major trade. Let the kids choose what they want to be and train them to excel in that particular field and should you want them to have options, give them a minor major. You will find that this way kids will be smarter and more focused other than when you bombard them with a million subjects and expect them to excel in all of them.

The current education system is also biased to white collar careers, but one thing these so called education administrators forget is that not all kids are the same and working in an office is not everything. I wonder if they have ever heard of people like Muhammad Ali, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, Kalusha Bwalya and the list is estimable. I am putting across the fact there are other avenues of progress in this world such as sports, art, fashion, drama, film, music, the media, innovation, science, social work and what in recent years has proved to be a very lucrative career- preaching. The role of teachers or mentors should be to identify what a child’s potential is and develop the child’s aspirations further. By 10th grade, a kid and the parents will have to choose a particular trade and focus on being good at what they want to do such that by the time the kid completes grade twelve, they are al least ready to face ‘society’ because we would have equipped them with life skills. This is especially critical since universities and colleges are few and expensive.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have our own education system that’s tailored to suit our needs! It wouldn’t hurt to borrow from the Americans and create something called the Zambian dream, ‘you can be anything you want’. Let’s tell these kids that Zambia is a country of winners! It’s special to be Zambian! Let’s encourage them to be innovative, to enterprise, to work hard, never to quit- yes all things are possible if you put your heart to it!

A little more hope, a little more belief, effort and we are there!