NAMA Headache

Sulumani and Winky D

The National Arts Merit Awards scheduled for February 18, 2011 in Harare face problems of acceptance, owing largely to categories which do not allow comparing like with like and to the fact that it can be difficult to find specialised judges who are not also competing for awards. An addition problem for some is that anyone can nominate someone for an award, without necessarily obtaining the artiste's approval. 

This is because one of the standing rules of NAMA states that anyone can be nominated even without having submitted anything to NAMA. A case in point was a television drama titled "Hona Mwana Wako" which won the Best Screen Production Television/-Drama when it was never screened on ZBCTV. The category problems are the hardest to solve. Musicians always complain when it comes to judging the most outstanding artiste when Winky D's "Pa-Kitchen", Suluman Chimbetu's "Non-Stop" and "NdiMwari" by Blessing Shumba are put in the same category.

What the organisers need to do is to categorise the music by genre. A fan who loves sungura will say Sulu's "Non-Stop" was the most outstanding album and yet a diehard gospel fan would say it was Shumba's "NdiMwari". It will make sense to categorise the awards and artistes according to genres rather than lump them together. But that does cost money and sponsors are hard to find already. Too many categories also mean that in the end everyone is a winner. But generally, music awards around the world tend to allow different categories, while film awards tend to be more of the "best film" type.

Perhaps NAMA could expand a bit each year until it comes up with the correct award categories.

Another problem last year was in the Media Awards for the Outstanding Arts Reporter (electronic) where there were two nominees - Terrence Mapurisana and Hazvinei Sakarombe. We understand there are not many television stations in Zimbabwe and NAMA appears desperate to have nominees in this category such that the adjudicators saw it fit to include presenter Hazvinei Sakarombe aka DJ Chilli as one of the "reporters". Can the adjudicators tell us for what news channel DJ Chilli reports? Even acting can present critics with a bonus. 

Munyaradzi Chidzonga, Ben Sibenke and George Tanjani were all nominated for the Outstanding Actor award in the Film and Television category. For all we know, Munya acted in "The Gentleman", a film, while Sibenke and Tanjani appear in local soaps. The question now is how on earth the judges came up with nominees who act in two different genres? It is like comparing apples with oranges! Much of the controversy surrounding this year's NAMA is a direct result of vagueness regarding the categories, something which can be avoided if the organisers take time to broaden the scope of the awards.

One way of ensuring that NAMA categories do not cause confusion is that before they start selecting the nominees they should announce the categories first so that the artistes know which category to enter.

Secondly, they have to expand music categories to cover all genres that are common in Zimbabwe such as sungura, gospel, dancehall/urban grooves and afro-jazz. These categories can also be further expanded to outstanding male or female in addition to the above. (Herald)