The first law seemed to pay attention to detail even if it had overlooked aspects such as the establishment of adjudicating bodies, a copyright society and the collecting body.

The licensing of the collecting society runs parallel with campaigns, this time emanating from the Ministry of Culture and Sport, for the establishment of an arts council established by parliamentary statute.

It must cause anxiety that these processes are happening as if they have no relationship to each other. There appears to be no logical sequence to the abolition of the Botswana National Cultural Council, its replacement by a national arts council, and the establishment of a copyright society which will presumably oversee the operations of the collecting society.

In this whole myriad of constructions, the Ministry of Trade will be the main actor in seeing to the workings of the copyright and collecting societies. In essence this boils down to the simple formula: the government will establish an arts council, finance it and run it. 

It will establish a copyright society, finance it and run it.  It will establish a collecting society, finance it and run it.

The irony is that the government will most likely seek its own friends, most likely owners of property such as music publishers, producers and proprietors of recording studios, to run the organisations referred to above, in collusion and connivance with the government.

This means that the 'rights owners', which in reality refers to the artists who own nothing, will not have proper representation on the conceived organisations unless they cultivate personal relationships with the people at the ministries of Culture and Trade.

There must be a clear explanation and debate about the perceived purpose of the arts council, its structure, and its manner of operation.This debate must happen in the artists' community, in civil society, in the district councils and at Parliament and the Ntlo ya Dikgosi.

Dikgosi because the district councils, which operate side by side with the tribal administrations, will have a role to play in the preservation and protection of the folk arts which are the very foundation for the building of an intrinsically Botswana arts culture.  That is the only thing that the country possesses that is uniquely indigenous.

The arts unions must play a part in the establishment of the arts council because they represent the voice of the primary stakeholders in the enhancement of an arts culture in Botswana.

Sadly, but not surprisingly, the representatives of the association that pretends to be a trade union appear to be concerned more about government protection of their records against illegal reproduction and hawking by people they describe as 'MaChina'.

The spokespersons of BOMU appear to be blind to the opportunities that lie in the establishment of an arts council, an independent copyright society, and a non-governmental collecting society that will be protected against hegemony of the producers, band managers, studio owners, government and others who are not arts practitioners.

The representative organisations of the artists must study all aspects of the entertainment industry so that the artists should not be routinely isolated from active participation in decision-making about the institutions that will determine the fate of their products. 

Chasing Chinese in Botswana is an important aspect of protection of cultural artefacts, but it is not the only means of pre-empting unfair exploitation of cultural artefacts and their producers.

For Christ's sake the artists must get clued in to contemporary issues that affect the economic, social and political life of artists. What has the union to say about exploitation of their work trough the Internet? Have the artists discussed the implications of the state information services that they are going public? Have the artists asked about the shape of ownership of the company that will run the collecting society?
Please give us leadership, for Christ's sake.