BEPA working to fully commercialise the creative industry
Foreign entertainers raking more money than locals
Botswana Entertainment Promoters Association (BEPA) has launched a recruitment drive working to commercialise the creatives business and set up its value chain.
President of BEPA, Gilbert Seagile says this is a recovery plan, meant for all the promoters to come onboard and register with the association.
“This initiative advocates for licensing of all the local promoters, to help capture data and run our events effectively, as an association," he said.
Seagile clarifies that the recruitment will take three months to engage promoters across the country and have them registered. This exercise started in January and will end in March. They started in Boteti Region, and are yet to cover Francistown, Selibe Phikwe, Maun-Kasane, Gantsi-Tsabong, Mahalapye-PalapyeSerowe, while the Southern part of the country, Gaborone and surrounding areas, has already been covered.
They are being helped by the Ministry of Youth Empowerment Sport and Culture Development while Local Enterprise Authority (LEA) assists with the recovery plan of creatives to develop a commercialisation plan for the industry.
They will be using offices of the ministry of youth in different places to run the recruitment and television programmes including Letlhabile and Now! Tv to mobilise creatives. Seagile reiterates that BEPA intends to take control of everything that is eventsrelated, and stop parastatals, government and private companies from directly appointing any creative. “This has been delaying the government to help us to a point that they would use only the same faces for events. But if there is a structure it would be much easier for the creatives entrepreneurs to also benefit from anything that is put on the table,’’ Seagile said. He also notes that out of the P7 billion allocated for the creatives, Agriculture and Tourism sectors, they want to ensure that their share is spent prudently, hence promoters accredited by BEPA will be eligible to host an event and identify other creatives. “Lack of professionalism and unchecked proliferation has been deteriorating in the industry, which is why we want to come together to grow as an entity. "We are thankful for the support that the ministry always gives us. Having them on board means a lot, so that we can together make amends where possible,” he points out.
All promoters are expected to have completed the licencing process by August because if not, they won’t manage to host events or anything related to promotion. BEPA also wishes to partner with local government, to be able to work efficiently with districts to ensure that promoters run the events in those places. Seagile is of the view that this could help the creatives industry to grow as well as generating income for local content than for the international content as it is the case currently. They still advocate for 70 percent local content and 30 percent international content on the local air space, with Seagile adding that according to the COSBOTS Distribution data, as at June 2019 to June 2020 duration of airplay for local content was over 6 million times, while foreign works airplay time was registered at over 17 million times.
As for the distribution of money, COSBOTS members benefited from local distribution of money worth less than one million pula, being just about P918 000.00, while international distribution was at over P3.3 million. He is convinced that partnership is needed to build the industry and ensure that local people benefit and improve their work.
What’s with the former presidents in some African countries turning against their government and causing trouble? Looks like this has become a trend as seen from the concern of South African minister Gwede Mantashe who even singled out one of them when addressing the matter of former South African president Jacob Zuma refusing to appear before the State Capture Commission. “Former Presidents are not presidents. If a former president decides to tarnish a country and its reputation, it is a deliberate decision. That president has taken a decision to hurt the country,” said Mantashe this week. It would appear a current trend in Africa for former Presidents to be a thorn in the flesh of those in power. We see it here, we see it next door, we see it in Central Africa. The sooner these chaps realize they are only former presidents the better. People must be happy to have been given the chance to rule and retire in peace, not in pieces. What more do people still want? Rwanda President Paul Kagame says: You cannot institutionalize corruption in your country, benefit from it while in office, and then turn round to be in opposition to a corrective regime.” Can our African brothers please just rest. Magatwe a re in Central African Republic, the former president there leads a hostile rebel group. We do not want that next door or here.
Selassie, whose country had long joined the League of Nations, made an impassioned plea for a rules-based multilateral order as the only guarantee for international peace and morality, but as we all know, he was left in the lurch to his own devices, leading to the partial occupation of Abyssinia and Selassie’s subsequent exile to Bath, England.
We rarely ever hear of anything positive that comes from Africa, which can help the progress of humankind. At best this continent is a source of raw materials for the First World countries – they rape and pillage it with such wanton abandon, whilst they preach about the need to maintain an ecological balance!
That is how the world agreed to the Paris Accord – the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC).
But whilst all these sound fantastic, there’s an underlying common denominator that explains the double standard of the West and the so-called First World.
What particularly inspired Ernesto’s Briefs this week was a meeting I recently had with the Ambassadors of France and Germany to Botswana Messrs Laurence Beau and Margit Hellwig-botte.
During that conversation they extolled the virtues of the Alliance for Democracy – a Franco-German Initiative signed by foreign ministers of both countries in August 2019 at the United Nations Assembly.
The initiative ostensibly brings together countries that share the belief that a rules-based multilateral order is the only guarantee for international stability and peace. Now, this really riled me!
I will highlight just two points, which in my humble opinion, point to the hypocrisy, deceptive manoeuvres and worst of all the double standards of the so-called First World countries.
Let’s consider the Alliance for Multilateralism. Does what it aims to achieve ring a bell? Well let me jog your memory! Back in the early 1930’s when today’s United Nations Organisations was known as the League of Nations, the Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie I appealed to it to intervene when Italy’s Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini in his expansionist colonial adventure, desired to invade the East African country.
Mussolini was also inspired by a burning passion to avenge the humiliation of Italy’s defeat at the hands of Ethiopia in the decisive 1896 Battle of Adowa.
Selassie, whose country had long joined the League of Nations, made an impassioned plea for a rules-based multilateral order as the only guarantee for international peace and morality, but as we all know, he was left in the lurch to his own devices, leading to the partial occupation of Abyssinia and Selassie’s subsequent exile to Bath, England.
But what then followed was something of Divine intervention, because immediately thereafter, Germany’s Adolf Hitler struck Poland, while France and Britain attacked Germany to mark the start of World War II.
That was the price the world paid for failing to heed the advice of Ras Tafari Makonnen!
Now so many years later, France and Germany which had rejected Africa’s request for using the League of Nations (UN) as a standard bearer for international peace, is today lecturing the world about ann Alliance for Multilateralism!
Secondly, imagine France’s double standards! While it tells the world about an Alliance for Multilateralism and the need to respect the inviolability of the United Nations – France is the same country that is violating the UN Conventions intended to facilitate a national plebiscite for the peoples of Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, commonly known as Western Sahara.
Such a plebiscite, which has been stalled since 1963, would lead to the full independence and territorial integrity of the peoples of SADR, but no, France and the United States of America have been leading the onslaught at the UN Security Council to deny this North African country full independence from the partial and illegal occupation of Morocco!
So, I ask, is France which still holds sway over a large part of Africa, known as Francophone Africa and Germany, which launched the first genocide on the Nama and Herero of Namibia in 1900 but to this day refuses to pay reparations to the southern African country – fit to teach the world about the virtues of multilateralism?
You tell me!
As for me, I say until the day that France completely pulls its troops out of Africa so that the Africa Union Standby Force can eventually become a reality and until the day when Germany not only apologises for the carnage it wrought in Namibia but also pays reparations to the Namibians just as they did to the European Jews for that infamous Holocaust of 1941-45 only then will I reconsider my attitude towards their initiative known as the Alliance for Multilateralism!