PAY LOCAL ARTISTS SAME AS SA ACTS AT SITF ” - MSHIKISHI

MBABANE – MTN SWAMA Lifetime Achievement Award winner Mshikishi has appealed to the organisers of the Swaziland International Trade Fair (SITF) to treat artists as equals and pay them the same amount.

The veteran musician raised the point that it is a norm that for example local artists would be paid E5 000 to perform at an event while international acts are given amounts that are slightly below or about E100 000.
The musician said he hoped that this year SIPA would use the precedent set by Swazi MTN during the recent awards and treat Swazi artists with the same respect as they do for international artists.

He made an example that he had nothing to his name in terms of assets despite the fact that he has been in the music industry for nearly five decades.
“It is painful to watch the money that is meant to keep up the livelihood of local musicians being given to foreigners and local artists being short changed in their own home country. For this reason I am pleading with SIPA to pay local artists the same amount paid to international artists,” he said.

When contacted for comment on the matter, SIPA’s Sihle Nkanbindze referred this reporter to SWAMA and ACASWA whom he said they work closely with in regards to the payment fees of local artists. He added that they would be in better position to address the matter.

When contacted for comment on the matter SWAMA’s PRO Menzi Mthethwa revealed that they had received a proposed line-up of artists that SIPA chose to perform at the Trade Fair this year and further proposed that each live performer should not be paid less that E10 000 as the minimum.

“We engaged them and told them that we would rather cut down the list of performers in order for each artist to be paid a fair amount and they understood. We further proposed that each live performer cannot be paid less than E10 000 as the minimum performance fee. The performance fees differ from artist to artist and therefore the final list will be revealed next week,” he said.

Post your comment

Your name:

Your e-mail address:

Add your comments:

Please enter the code you see in the image:

Image:

Code: