Congolese Courts Have Ruled Four Times Who Controls SOCODA. A Government Report Says $25 Million Meant for Its Artists Is Still Unaccounted For.

Courts in Kinshasa have ruled at least four times since 2023 on who legally runs SOCODA, the only body collecting performance and mechanical royalties for authors, composers and producers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Every ruling found so far has gone the same way, in favour of the board led by musician Joseph-Roger “Jossart” Nyoka Longo, the Zaiko Langa Langa guitarist. The rival claimant, Blaise Bula Monga, has lost every round and kept operating anyway. In July 2026, SOCODA under Nyoka Longo’s board paid royalties to roughly 140 authors and composers. In August 2026, cooperative members wrote directly to President Félix Tshisekedi asking him to intervene, because, in their words, the leadership crisis was threatening “la perception et la redistribution efficiente des droits d’auteur,” the collection and redistribution of copyright itself.

No one disputes what SOCODA is supposed to do: collect royalties for Congolese rights holders and pay them out. What is disputed, repeatedly, in court, is who runs it, and that distinction matters for every artist whose airplay or broadcast use is supposed to generate a payment, because an institution fighting over its own leadership is not reliably doing that job.

How the dispute started

On 3 February 2023, Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Minister of Culture sent a letter convoking a general assembly of SOCODA for six days later. That assembly, held on 9 February 2023 at the Musée national in Kinshasa, elected Blaise Bula as the new board president, replacing Nyoka Longo. Nyoka Longo’s side says it did not attend. The minutes were published in the official journal on 10 March 2023.

Nyoka Longo, together with musicians Manda Chante, Bozi Boziana and six others, took the matter to court. Here the sourcing splits in a way worth stating plainly rather than smoothing over: Actualite.cd, reporting on 20 March 2023, says the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Kinshasa/Gombe ruled after a public hearing on 13 March 2023, annulling the 9 February assembly’s minutes because SOCODA’s own statutes require 15 days’ notice between a convocation and a general assembly, and because not all cooperative members were summoned. Mediacongo.net, in a separate piece, describes a ruling bearing the same date, 13 March 2023, but attributes it instead to the Cour d’appel de Kinshasa/Gombe, under the case number RC 124.306. Both outlets name the same outcome, the same date, and the same losing party. Neither can be reconciled with the other on which court actually issued it, and no court registry or primary ruling text was located to settle the question.

The Ministry of Culture did not accept that framing, saying the convocation had been approved by a Conseil d’État order and that Bula’s opponents had been invited to co-chair the session but declined.

The next ruling is not in dispute. On 24 April 2023, the Cour d’appel de Kinshasa/Gombe issued Arrêt Exécutoire RCA 39.022, upholding the first-instance decision in favour of the Nyoka Longo board. A jurist quoted by Mediacongo at the time called it the end of the matter. It was not.

A one-year truce that did not hold

By December 2024, with both sides still claiming to run SOCODA, the Ministry of Culture tried fusion instead of adjudication. On 27 December 2024, at the CCAPAC in Kinshasa, the two boards signed a one-year convention merging their boards and general management into one structure under ministry oversight, after which a new extraordinary general assembly would decide the organisation’s future, which reporting at the time expected to mean liquidation.

That did not happen. By February 2026, barely a year later, the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Kinshasa/Kalamu was issuing a fresh order, this time barring anyone linked to the Bula wing from convening a general assembly, including one the Bula camp had scheduled for 9 February 2026, from collecting any copyright or neighbouring-rights royalties, and from exercising collective rights management at all. The order described the committee elected at the original 2023 assembly as “juridiquement inexistant,” its minutes already annulled by final judicial decisions.

August 2026: a banned press conference, held anyway

The clearest single document in this record is a letter. On 5 August 2026, the Procureur général près la Cour de Cassation, Firmin Mvonde Mambu, wrote to the director of a Kinshasa cultural centre, letter number 3126/D.023/26469/PGCCAS/VON/2026, asking him not to host a press conference Bula had planned for the following day. The letter states plainly that the Procureur général’s office had been “saisi de la contestation de votre qualité de Président du Conseil d’Administration de la SOCODA,” and that, in light of court decisions already rendered, the venue should not receive him. The letter cites two further Cour d’appel de Kinshasa/Gombe rulings, numbered 018/2026 and 039/2026, both said to confirm that the only legitimate SOCODA board is the one led by Nyoka Longo. This desk could not locate the text of either ruling directly, only the Procureur général’s characterisation of them and trade press reporting the same characterisation.

Bula held the press conference anyway, at 15:00 on 6 August 2026, in a different hall in Kasa-Vubu, after the originally planned venue was closed to him. He continued to claim the board presidency, invoking what reporting describes only as a presidential ordinance, with no further detail on which one. Separately, in a Tribunal de Grande Instance de Kinshasa/Gombe judgment, case number RC 122094, reported in the same period, the court rejected Bula’s claim outright, calling his action “recevable mais non fondée,” admissible but without merit, and ordered him to pay damages for a vexatious action, pointing specifically to his having set up a competing structure.

Four days later, on 10 August 2026, in an interview with the Kinshasa outlet Arts.cd, Bula rejected the idea that he was simply defying settled law. “Nous refusons toute gestion ‘bicéphale’ qui divise et affaiblit la SOCODA COOP-CA,” he said: we refuse any “two-headed” management that divides and weakens the organisation. He argued that if Nyoka Longo’s side stays in place on current terms, it and its allies will have accumulated 14 years as SOCODA administrators by 2029. He called for an independent audit covering both camps, a cleaned-up membership register and a fresh general assembly, and said a 2024 digital rights-management partnership with Trace, the pan-African media group, had stalled amid the dispute. That last claim rests on Bula’s own account and was not independently verified.

The money question nobody has fully answered

Underneath the leadership fight is a separate, harder claim about money. On 18 November 2025, the Kinshasa outlet Strong2KinMoov reported, citing the French intelligence and business newsletter Africa Intelligence, that an Inspection Générale des Finances report had found more than $25,000,000 earmarked for Congolese rights holders could not be accounted for, against only $35,882 confirmed as actually redistributed to them. The article names Nyoka Longo, describing him as “de nouveau pointé du doigt” after four years running the organisation, and raises the possibility of political protection, without reporting any charge or finding against him specifically. This record treats that figure with caution: Afrobeats Wire has not seen the report itself, does not know what period it covers, and is relying on one outlet’s account of another outlet’s account of a government report that, as far as this desk could determine, has never been published.

What is independently documented is narrower. On 2 June 2024, Radio Okapi reported that SOCODA, under interim director general Joe Mondonga Moyama, paid 206 authors, composers, playwrights and producers for works verified as broadcast across Haut-Katanga, Kongo-Central and Kinshasa provinces between 31 May and 11 June that year. Mondonga said the prior leadership’s distribution rounds “auront été sans fondement valable,” without valid basis. No dollar figure was given. A year later, Focus Actu reported around 140 authors and composers paid in July 2026 under the Nyoka Longo-led structure. Neither payment round resolves the $25 million question; they establish only that some money has moved to some rights holders, under contested leadership.

What this means for artists

For a Congolese songwriter or producer, SOCODA is not a distributor, a label or a publisher. It is the body meant to turn a radio play, a live set or a broadcast use into an actual payment. When it cannot settle who is legally allowed to run it, two things follow directly. Collection itself becomes contested: the February 2026 court order barred one entire camp from collecting any royalties at all, meaning whichever side an artist’s paperwork runs through may not have the legal standing to collect on their behalf. And distribution becomes unpredictable: two separate interim leaderships, 17 months apart, have each told the public the previous regime’s payout rounds lacked a valid basis, which is not reassuring to hear twice from two managements of the same organisation.

None of this means Congolese royalties have stopped moving. SOCODA has demonstrably paid some artists, in 2024 and again in 2026. But guitarist Godé Lofombo was still telling Congo Quotidien in August 2026 that “nos droits ne sont pas vraiment respectés en tant qu’artistes,” our rights are not really respected as artists, and cooperative members were writing to the president the same month asking him to intervene personally. For an artist trying to work out whether a given use of their music was actually paid for, the honest answer is that it depends which SOCODA is meant, and that question has sat in Kinshasa’s courts, on and off, for three and a half years.

Afrobeats Wire found no reporting on this dispute dated after 31 August 2026 despite a direct search; this record will be updated if a further ruling, a published Inspection Générale des Finances report, or a resolution between the two camps is reported.