Amendment of NACZ 1985 Act and what it means for the creative industries

February 18, 2010 by ZimboJam ·
Filed under: Arts & Culture Indaba 2010

Elvas Mari

Notes from a presentation by Mr Elvas Mari, Director of the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe.
Arts & Culture Indaba 2010, Harare, 18 February 2010
Since 1985 the National Arts Council of Zimbabwe (NACZ) has had District Arts Councils and board members appointed by the minister country wide. However since 1998 these structures have not been functional due to the lack of funding to sustain them. At both these levels, there were no administrative staff but rather volunteers, which is an ineffectual way of running a serious administration. The national board was made up of reps from the provinces and some outside the province. The Government could not afford allowances for all these district and provincial members so from 1999 when the first 9 member board was appointed, it did not reflect what was in the Act.

In terms of changes, there has been a suggestion to cut the number of board members from 20 to 11 in which 9 should come from area of expertise, e.g. tourism, legal and the artists and those who have helped in the development of Arts. The director of NACZ is not an ex-officio board member but in practice he makes decisions.

Limit of Board members. The current does not limit how many times a board member is elected. We are proposing 3 terms each having 3 years.

Appointment of Chair and Vice chair on the board. In the current Act, the minister appoints a chair person. We propose that the board members choose the chair on their own to ensure good working relations. The minister should only be told who has been elected.

NACZ currently cannot loan or provide monetary grants to projects of Art. We have to go through other partners. This is related to the issue of levies, the NAC should be able to charge levies which they will be able to grant to projects. The levies should come from consumers. The performing sectors, promoters are required to be levied in terms of their promotion. Galleries, exporters are levied and the money assists artists in loans and grants. There have not been any significant grants given to artists in the last 10 years due to absence of that money. Projects to generate that money are there, e.g. when exporting sculpture, a certain levy should be paid the to NACZ and that is the money intended to be turned into grants to help other artists.

In the 2010 budget NACZ got US$129 000 for salaries and US$40 000 for operation. We can not afford external auditors to look into the use of the money.

In summary, we are looking at NACZ membership, Levies and budget allocation. Levies should be able to allow the exporter to get even better quality products in the future. We should be able to come up with development programmes whereby we are able to give out loans to artists and give them duty free importation of equipment.

These suggestions have been submitted to the Ministry of Education, Sports, Arts and Culture and they are facilitating their tabling in Parliament.

- Tendai Chimuriwo

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