The Sunday News
THE Zimbabwe International Book Fair (ZIBF) has embarked on an exercise aimed at arresting the proliferation of book piracy, a development, which has seen authors and publishing houses getting nothing from their work.
A number of books are pirated and sold on the streets and the ZIBF board has expressed displeasure over the illicit activity that has affected the publishing industry.
Chairman of the ZIBF board Musaemura Zimunya last week highlighted the challenges posed by piracy in a statement.
He said they were ready to fight book piracy activities at all levels including engaging in legal fronts.
Zimunya said the book industry had suffered during the national economic meltdown at the turn of the century as well as rampant book piracy which he said had culminated in the creation of a “parallel mafia” economy run by intellectual property robbers and cynical book thieves.
“Before our current crisis, there are writers out there who built or acquired houses of their own, not to mention vehicles from their book royalties. They have also been able to fund the education of their children up to university,” he said.
Zimunya sympathised with writers who have not tasted the fruits of their labour ever since they published their books.
He said they were facilitating the re-organisation of the industry and galvanising efforts to combat the scourge (book piracy) on several fronts.
“One of the programmes we aim to do is promoting awareness of the crime of violation of intellectual property and organised book piracy and the other will be engaging the police, Ministries of Justice and Legal Affairs, that of Education, local authorities and enforcement agents in order to attack the scourge from multiple angles,” he said.
Zimunya who is also the chairman of Zimbabwe Writers Association (ZWA) said they were ready for the 2014 ZIBF event to be held in Harare from 28 July and would run for a week.
The event will be held under the theme — Indigenous Languages, Literature, Art and Knowledge Systems in Africa.
He emphasised the need to keep and embrace African languages and also challenged writers to recognise marginalised languages in the country which he said were quite critical in preserving Zimbabwean culture and national identity.
“In this year’s theme, we are embracing the hitherto marginalised languages of Zimbabwe that are now legally recognised under our new Zimbabwean constitution which has a potential to transform our understanding of our national identity and the importance of tolerance of ethnic diversity,” he said.
The six-day ZIBF will be funded by the Culture Fund in partnership with the European Union, the British Council, Kopinor and Norcode as well as HIVOS.
