Litnet

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Shall we just abandon bookshops for WhatsApp groups?

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The following is an excerpt from an oral presentation that was supposed to be given by the author in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, on 27 April 2024 in commemoration of World Intellectual Property Day. Due to unforeseen circumstances, this event was cancelled.

As an author, I am constantly asked for PDF versions of my books. Sure, go ahead and help yourself; I mean, it’s not like I paid a proofreader, paid a designer and sourced the rights to use the artwork on the covers. Sure, go ahead and have a PDF copy on WhatsApp. And cast it as far as mistletoe throughout your entire village, so everyone can read my book while I never benefit a dime off it. But tomorrow, when you see me hungry, don’t say, “Art does not pay.” Say, “We did not pay for his art.”

We have local music on our phones, acquired through the neat technology of SHAREit and WhatsApp. Downloaded from Tubidy or reaped from a YouTube video. Remember how they used to say you shouldn’t give a black man an axe or matches? Now, imagine what happens when you give him a computer that fits right in his pocket. (Wow, what a racist sentiment, right? Just stay with me for a bit.)

I love how casual Zimbabweans are about piracy. At no point does the person sharing this music for free think they are committing a crime. So, we use words like “support” for artists. Support is charity; go, support ZANU-PF and your kin in the village, but please: pay for art. Is it possible that artists don’t do real work? How do we have people selling pirated books right across at the Central Police Station with no fear of getting arrested by the state police for selling illegal goods, and rather being more concerned with the municipality police charging them with selling in an undesignated area?

When obviously stolen goods are so shamelessly displayed and traded in the light of day, it becomes abundantly clear that both we the peasants and the powers that be have a problem understanding intellectual property rights. I asked myself one day: what could be the problem with us? As a people? Then, I recalled a conversation I had had with one of my uncles, a priest in some cathedral in town. According to him, the African can never be 100% Christian. The African will always be a syncretist. When I pondered this, things started to fall into place and make sense.

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When obviously stolen goods are so shamelessly displayed and traded in the light of day, it becomes abundantly clear that both we the peasants and the powers that be have a problem understanding intellectual property rights.

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Traditionally, we wrote songs for the community; everyone sang them, they travelled, they became the very fabric of cultural identity, and nobody ever cared to wonder who had written them. Songs travelled from festivals, funerals, weddings and all social events and became famous without anyone knowing their composers. We did the same with stories – inganekwane; we gave them to the community because they served a purpose: to teach, to heal, to inspire, to console, to bring joy. Our stories were learned by griots, who wandered the plains of our great civilisations retelling of great men and their deeds.

Now, we wear neckties and talk through invisible electric lines. The paradigm shift has us now creating art to serve an individual. The songs that were supposed to bring us joy are now meant to bring a person fortune. We have packaged the divine, the spiritual, its healing power, and demanded payment for our anointing. Just like the native Americans, who could not understand the colonialists when a man came to claim the land as his personal property, it is my submission here today that the African mind is trying to understand how someone can own a song. The African believes the songs belong to her; the African believes our ideas belong to them and the community, because the inner African spirit is cooperation over competition.

The idea of copyright can exist only in a capitalist society. The African we are dealing with is not inherently capitalist, hence whatever people out there call “black tax” she calls duty. When the white man arrived among the Cherokee, they were confounded by his view of the world: the white man believed in rights; the Cherokee believed in responsibility, just like the African. This is the African woman who is proud to be submissive, and the African man who is proud to be the provider. What is black tax? This is the African who believes that it takes a village to raise a child, or an idiot. Have you seen how this African perceives democracy? We treat the elected like our superiors, when truly they are our actual employees – you know, civil servants.

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The idea of copyright can exist only in a capitalist society. The African we are dealing with is not inherently capitalist, hence whatever people out there call “black tax” she calls duty.

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Maybe that is not a bad thing – the African’s outlook, I mean. When Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine, he did not patent it, because he wanted it to be available to as many people as possible. He could not reconcile making a fortune, and I mean a fortune that has been estimated at seven billion dollars, while other people continued in affliction, some probably crippled from infancy to the end of their days – so that he could make more money than he could ever spend in his entire life. Without his selfless act of compassion, we might have never eradicated the affliction.

Think of all the wonderful things we have as humankind. Think of how much more we could develop if we were more open to sharing our ideas. All the things I mentioned in the beginning, like language, technology, ideas. Human beings would be much further than where they are. Imagine if knowledge were free and everyone who wanted a degree could just walk in and learn without having to worry about registration and lecture fees. I think the Fees Must Fall movement did not succeed because the South African who demands the right to a free education is fighting a system that has commercialised knowledge and branded educational institutions into factories, creating a cycle that ensures prestige and advantage in return for top dollar. It is the same system that believes in copyright and intellectual property, a system that believes in getting ahead at the expense of the next person, that my ideas should only be shared if I am to benefit. To some, it is a system that is slowing down human progress.

But yet, the creation, packaging and distribution of art still costs money. Will I get it out of the African, or will I have to concede and give up my works to her in PDF? Shall we just abandon bookshops for WhatsApp groups? I do not know; I am, after all, a humble writer, and writers, according to Chinua Achebe, give headaches, not prescriptions. And I have left myself with a big one.