Zimbabwe’s collecting society has spent 2026 in court rather than in the licensing market. The distribution math underneath the fight explains why its own members stopped defending it.
CMO means collective management organisation: the body that licenses radio, venues, hotels and broadcasters on behalf of songwriters, then splits the money.
What happened to ZIMURA
- The Ministry of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs dissolved the board of the Zimbabwe Music Rights Association on 9 April 2026, citing corruption, financial mismanagement and governance failures, according to iHarare.
- The High Court then reinstated chair Alexio Gwenzi, First Farai Batani and Evelyn Natsai Moyo with immediate effect until the case is finalised, iHarare reported on 8 May 2026.
- The trigger was a payout. ZIMURA distributed about US$95,000 to more than 3,500 members in its September 2024 cycle. Top earners cleared US$2,000. Producer and songwriter Charles Ayibeki said he received US$5.60 for one song.
- Pressure had been building since October 2025, when Zimbabwe Musicians Union president Edith WeUtonga-Katiji and Music Management Forum director Russel Mavudzi told Newsday they wanted the leadership dissolved and the books opened.
The pot is small because the licensing is small
Gwenzi told Newsday in April that broadcasters, hotels and other music users owe ZIMURA more than US$1 million in unpaid royalties.
He also described one fast-food outlet paying US$46,000 to a rival society against an invoice of US$86,719 from ZIMURA. Competing societies in the same repertoire produce exactly that: tariff undercutting, and a smaller pool for everyone.
“A royalty system is like a bank account. If no one makes a deposit, you cannot expect a withdrawal,” Gwenzi said.
The recording rail never stopped paying
Zimbabwe had 6.54 million internet users at 38.4 percent penetration at the end of 2025, per DataReportal’s Digital 2026 report.
Music Metrics Vault’s Spotify ranking for Zimbabwe puts Bulawayo-born Afro house producer Nitefreak at roughly 2.7 million monthly listeners, well ahead of Sha Sha (about 427,000), the late Oliver Mtukudzi (265,000) and Jah Prayzah (240,000).
Nitefreak built that offshore. Management came through Francis Mercier’s New York label Deep Root Records, and he now co-runs his own imprint, Afroholic Records, with UK-based Zimbabwean entrepreneur Terrie T, as Dancing Astronaut reported in July 2026. Sha Sha’s 2026 run, including the Kelvin Momo collaboration “Ndawana”, moves through South African infrastructure, per Rolling Stone Africa.
None of that money passes through Harare. Master recording income from Spotify, Apple Music, Boomplay, Audiomack and YouTube flows through distributors, not societies.
Two rails, two different problems
ZIMURA is not idle on digital. Former executive director Polisile Ncube-Chimhini told Newsday the society had licensed YouTube, TikTok and Facebook and moved from one annual distribution to four or five. The reform plan now adds a mobile app and a legislative push to route international streaming platforms through local CMOs.
That covers the composition. It does not cover the master, and conflating the two is how Zimbabwean artists end up waiting on a US$3 cheque while their catalogue earns elsewhere.
What a Zimbabwean artist or label should set up
- Join a CMO for the composition side anyway. Reciprocal agreements are the only route to foreign performance income.
- Keep master delivery on a separate distribution agreement. The two rails do not compete.
- Lock ISRC and UPC codes at source. ISRC means International Standard Recording Code, and it is what makes a claim provable.
- Register splits before release, not after a record breaks.
- Build your own airplay evidence. A grassroots training programme run by Prince Peter Moyo, profiled by Newsday in April 2026, teaches audio fingerprinting and Shazam data reading so claims rest on evidence rather than argument.
The distribution read
Southern African catalogue needs a rail that treats Boomplay and Audiomack as first-class destinations alongside Spotify and Apple Music, delivers via DDEX (Digital Data Exchange, the industry’s standard metadata format), and reports at territory level with per-collaborator splits visible in the royalty dashboard.
Governance fights at a CMO are worth following. They are not worth waiting for. Related reading: our guide to music distribution platforms for Zimbabwean artists, the same pattern in Uganda and Ethiopia, and the broader local-global paradox.
