Zimbabwe’s Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs dissolved the entire board of the Zimbabwe Music Rights Association (ZIMURA) in an administrative decision dated 26 March 2026. The High Court stayed that decision on 6 May 2026 and ordered three of the five removed members back into their seats while the underlying case is decided. Nothing in either order touches the figure that put ZIMURA under public pressure in the first place: its own disclosure that about 64 per cent of the US$1.64 million it collected in 2024 was classified under staff and administration.
No master recording changed hands. No publishing catalogue changed hands. No distribution deal was signed. This is a governance dispute inside a collecting society, not a rights transaction, and the distinction matters for anyone trying to work out what it means for their royalties.
What ZIMURA actually does#
ZIMURA was registered on 30 March 1982 as a non-profit company limited by guarantee under Zimbabwe’s Companies Act, and it operates today under the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act. By its own account it represents more than 4,800 local members, composers, authors, publishers and producers, and it sits under the oversight of the Ministry of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs. Its job is to collect royalties on behalf of its members and pay them out. It does not own anyone’s songs or masters; it administers a collection mandate. That is the entire legal basis for the minister’s authority to intervene in its board in the first place, and it is also why this dispute cannot be read as any kind of catalogue or rights sale.
The number that triggered the crisis#
ZIMURA disclosed that it collected roughly US$1.64 million in 2024, and that about 64 per cent of that total was classified under staff and administration. That is the one figure ZIMURA itself has put on the record. A more granular breakdown, splitting the remainder between local artists, foreign rights holders and any trust fund, has circulated in press summaries but could not be verified in the source document this desk fetched, which states plainly that no further categorical breakdown is provided. That gap is the whole story here: members cannot tell, from what has been published, how the other 36 per cent was actually distributed.
The dissolution#
The minister’s decision, dated 26 March 2026 and publicly announced on 9 April 2026, removed five board members, including chairperson Alexio Gwenzi and vice chair Faith Batani, citing serious governance and operational failures, alleged breaches of fiduciary duty, weak financial transparency and questions over the legitimacy of ZIMURA’s leadership structures. The order gave the outgoing board seven days to hand over documents to an interim administrator. Whether an administrator has actually taken office has not been confirmed by any document fetched for this record.
The reinstatement#
Three of the five removed members went to the High Court and won a provisional order on 6 May 2026, in case number HCH1742/26. The order’s operative paragraphs, quoted directly by two separate outlets, state that the applicants “be and are hereby permitted to continue exercising their functions as Board Members … without interference,” and that execution of the minister’s 26 March decision “terminating the Applicants’ appointments as Board Members … be and is hereby stayed.” A provisional order is not a final ruling. It pauses the dissolution for three of the five; it does not say the minister was wrong to act, and it does not resolve the underlying governance complaints that prompted the dissolution.
The leadership dispute that came before it#
The board fight did not start with the minister. ZIMURA had already been through a contested chairmanship, with Gwenzi and Batani installed in January, and a separate claim from another member, Blessing Amuli, to a board seat dating to November. Three other board members, Derek Mpofu among them, say they were dismissed over their refusal to approve the sale of a set of flats in Avondale, Harare, to a buying agency that has been reported, but not established in any document fetched for this record, as linked to Gwenzi. Mpofu has said directly that the transaction “has not yet been completed because we, as the board of directors, refused to sign over or do the conveyancing for the property sale to be complete.” One source dates this entire sequence to January 2025; another dates it to January 2026, a full year apart. This record could not resolve which year is correct and discloses the discrepancy rather than picking a side.
A separate, concluded legal matter#
ZIMURA’s long-serving executive director, Polisile Ncube-Chimhini, left the organisation on 10 February 2026 after more than three decades in the role, following a fraud conviction and a High Court ruling that her post had no basis in ZIMURA’s own Articles of Association. The fraud case, heard by a Harare magistrate, concerned a CR6 company filing dated 12 April 2023 that was not formally registered until January 2024; she was acquitted on a related forgery charge. No sentence or fine figure appears in any source fetched for this record, and none is stated here.
What members have said directly#
Composers and performers gave testimony to Zimbabwe’s Parliament in testimony reported on 2 September 2026, describing annual royalty payments in the range of US$10 to US$30 while ZIMURA staff salaries were reported at more than US$4,000 a month, and noting that the organisation had gone without a properly constituted board for more than a year against a legal requirement of seven members. One composer, Eunice Dembo, told the committee in Shona that the organisation takes care of its management rather than its producers. These are the people with the clearest stake in how the 64 per cent administration figure breaks down, and they are on record saying the payouts they receive do not match it.
What this means for artists#
If you are a Zimbabwean composer, author or producer who routes royalties through ZIMURA, none of this changes who owns your work. Your masters and your publishing rights are untouched by any order described here. What is genuinely unsettled is who sits on the board overseeing how your collected royalties are spent, and whether the body collecting on your behalf will be made to publish a full accounting rather than a single headline percentage. The provisional order keeps three familiar faces in place for now, but it is explicitly temporary, and the governance complaints that led to the dissolution in the first place, including the unexplained administration share and the Avondale property dispute, remain open. Any member relying on ZIMURA for income should treat the current board as provisional, not settled, and should watch for either a final High Court ruling in HCH1742/26 or an audited breakdown of the 2024 collections, whichever comes first.
What this record does not establish#
This record does not establish that any ZIMURA official personally profited from the Avondale sale. It does not establish that the minister’s dissolution was lawful or unlawful on the merits; the High Court’s order is provisional and expressly does not decide that question. It does not establish that an interim administrator has in fact taken office. It does not establish the exact sentence or fine imposed on Ncube-Chimhini. It does not resolve whether the Gwenzi chairmanship and Avondale sequence occurred in 2025 or 2026, a discrepancy between two sources this desk could not settle. And it does not provide any breakdown of ZIMURA’s 2024 collections beyond the single 64 per cent staff-and-administration figure the organisation itself disclosed.
