ZIMURA Says In Total Band’s $150 Licence Covered One Show. The Band’s Producer Says It Was Legal All Along

The Zimbabwe Music Rights Association says the US$150 receipt that In Total Band has been using to defend its “Ecobank Legends Night” cover-song tour covered one event on one day, nothing more. In Total’s producer, Clive “Mono” Mukundu, says the band held a valid ZIMURA licence and operated within the law throughout. No master recording or publishing catalogue changes hands in this dispute. What is contested is narrower and more basic: whether a single-event performing-rights licence, issued by the collecting society that administers Zimbabwean composers’ performance royalties, can be stretched to cover a touring live show built around other people’s songbooks.

What ZIMURA actually administers here

ZIMURA does not own or publish the songs at issue. Under Zimbabwe’s Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act [Chapter 26:05], it holds a collecting-society mandate to license public performances of its members’ compositions and to distribute the resulting royalties back to those composers. In Total Band is a cover act; its “Ecobank Legends Night” shows are built around the catalogues of other Zimbabwean artists, among them gospel musician Fungisai Zvakavapano-Mashavave, who is a ZIMURA member. The upcoming instalment of the series is billed to also cover Salif Keita, Yondo Sister, Leonard Zhakata and Alick Macheso. None of those four are named in this dispute; the specific complaint driving ZIMURA’s intervention concerns Zvakavapano-Mashavave’s catalogue.

The $150 receipt

In a statement dated 9 September 2026 and carried by Zimbabwean trade press, ZIMURA said a US$150 licence receipt circulating on social media, which In Total Band has pointed to as proof it was properly licensed, “covered one event for one day” and did not give the band “permanent or unlimited authority” to use Zimbabwean composers’ music. The statement said the receipt does not authorise unlimited future performances, recordings, distribution or commercial use of composers’ catalogues, does not waive any owner’s moral or economic rights, and does not substitute for an artist’s specific consent where that consent is required. ZIMURA framed the underlying principle directly: “A licence is only valid within the scope, period and conditions under which it was issued.” The association also said it has no record of royalties paid specifically to Zvakavapano-Mashavave for In Total’s commercial use of her music, and that it has received no royalties at all from the Ecobank Legends Night tours.

ZIMURA backs its member, carefully

ZIMURA’s statement, reported the following day by trade outlets including allAfrica and NewZimbabwe, said the association is “in full support of Fungisai Zvakavapano Mashavave’s right to assert” her intellectual property and that “the rights of composers and copyright owners must be respected.” It said it “cannot and will not endorse the commercial exploitation of a member’s copyrighted works” where the owner has objected and the required permissions have not been properly addressed. ZIMURA was careful to add that its support “should not be interpreted as prejudging any matter that may ultimately come before a competent court of law.” No court filing by either side was identified in any source checked for this record; as of the most recent reporting, the dispute remains a public exchange of statements, not litigation.

Mukundu’s defence

Clive “Mono” Mukundu, the producer who has publicly defended In Total Band, maintained in a 13 September 2026 video response that the band held a ZIMURA licence and operated within the law. His core argument is that covering other artists’ songs is ordinary practice everywhere, not a Zimbabwe-specific offence: “A cover band is a cover band,” he said, adding that the Zimbabwean government itself runs three cover acts, the Police Band, the Prisons Band and the Air Force Band, and that “if it is done by the Police band, it is fine, but when it is done by others, it becomes an offence.” On the specific complaint from Zvakavapano-Mashavave, Mukundu said the two had exchanged messages on 12 April 2026, that he still holds that exchange and can post the audio, and that the band stopped playing her specific song after that date. He offered US$500 for video evidence that the band played her song again after 12 April. In the screenshot he shared, Zvakavapano-Mashavave’s own reply reads: “if you do not want them to play it, they can stop, but this would be a sad development.” That exchange, on its face, concerns one composer’s one song, not the licensing status of the wider Ecobank Legends Night format, which continues to cover other composers’ catalogues under the disputed one-event licence.

What this does not resolve

Separately, and not part of this dispute, veteran musician Thomas Mapfumo’s Chimurenga Music Company has barred his nephew Kurai Makore from performing or exploiting songs it controls, a dispute over family permission rather than a ZIMURA licence. Musician Dino Mudondo has separately complained that a different group, The Travellers Band, performed three of his songs at a wedding engagement. Zimbabwean trade press has reported these three disputes together as evidence of a wider pattern of unlicensed cover performances; this record treats them as what the documents fetched for it show them to be: three separate complaints involving three different acts, not one unified case against In Total Band.

What this means for artists

The practical question for any Zimbabwean composer whose catalogue gets covered live is not whether a venue or act holds a ZIMURA licence at all, but what that licence actually covers; on ZIMURA’s own account, a receipt for one event does not travel with a touring show to the next one. For touring cover acts, the inverse lesson holds: a single-event receipt is evidence of that event’s compliance only, and reusing it as blanket proof of an ongoing right invites exactly the dispute playing out here. Neither side has produced, in any document this desk could fetch, an actual licence document (as opposed to a payment receipt) that specifies its own duration or scope in writing.

What this record does not establish

This record does not establish that In Total Band in fact performed Zvakavapano-Mashavave’s song after 12 April 2026, Mukundu’s claim that it did not having gone unrebutted by any video evidence in sources checked for this record. It does not establish the band’s view of ZIMURA’s claim that the US$150 receipt was for one event only; no public response from the band itself, as opposed to from Mukundu personally, was located. It does not establish whether any formal complaint or legal filing has been lodged by Zvakavapano-Mashavave, ZIMURA, or In Total Band with any court, tribunal or regulator; no source fetched for this record names one. It does not establish the full fee or licensing history between ZIMURA and In Total Band beyond the single disputed receipt, nor whether the band holds or has applied for a separate touring or blanket licence for the Ecobank Legends Night series. It does not establish any detail of In Total Band’s own corporate or business structure, leadership or ownership; this desk could not independently verify those details to its sourcing standard and none are asserted here. This record also does not establish a resolution to the broader governance and royalty-distribution questions about ZIMURA documented separately by this desk following the 2 September 2026 parliamentary testimony on the association’s finances; it treats that context as background only, not as evidence for or against either party in this specific licensing dispute.