A pirated DVD showing the terrorist attack at Westgate Mall that was on sale on Ronald Ngala street in Nairobi on October 3, 2013. Officials from the Kenya Film Classification Board raided movie stalls as hawkers selling them were arrested. Photo/ANTHONY OMUYA NATION MEDIA GROUP
In Summary
“Making money out of tragedies that befell Kenyans is unacceptable and inhumane”, a monitoring and enforcement officer with the Censorship Board was quoted.
By Macharia Gaitho
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The Kenya Film Classification Board been roused out of deep stupor to raid shops stocking Westgate Under Siege, a rushed DVD compilation on the terrorist attack.
I suppose Citizen TV, NTV, BBC, KTN, Al Jazeera, K24, CNN and other local and international television stations will be happy that unauthorised use of their footage has been arrested.
But intellectual property theft and distribution of uncensored video is not what catches my attention.
“Making money out of tragedies that befell Kenyans is unacceptable and inhumane”, a monitoring and enforcement officer with the Censorship Board was quoted.
And that statement alone sums up plenty that is wrong with Kenya.
Instead of supporting entrepreneurship and creativity, we condemn it under the direction of some body that belongs to the age of some extinct monstrosity that used to be called the Ministry of National Guidance and Political Affairs.
I can bet my last shilling that somewhere in Hollywood, scriptwriters, producers and directors are working round the clock to be the first to hit the big screens with their versions of the Westgate siege.
They will be putting together the financial packages, probably with official government support and enlisting big-name actors to lend star-power to their productions. The issue of “making money out of tragedies” will not arise.
It would be great if some Hollywood blockbuster chose Nairobi for its location, but they will probably go elsewhere because they will not want to navigate a bureaucracy that accuses them of seeking to make money out of tragedies.
And that is even before they are levied punitive duties on equipment together with all sorts of extortionate fees and levies.
Worse, they will be required to submit their scripts to some over-zealous government censor armed with a red pen, who not only want to strike out objectionable material, but also sit around the set to ensure nothing he does not approve is filmed.
Then we wonder why movies where Kenya is the natural backdrop end up going to South Africa and other countries that understand how to lay out the welcome mat.
The River Road fellows who were first with Westgate Under Siege may have flouted many rules. They used pirated material for their copy-and-paste job and distributed their production without approvals.
That was wrong and should not be encouraged, but they should still, be lauded and supported for the dexterity, speed, creativity, and entrepreneurial spirit demonstrated in beating everybody else to the game.
Westgate has a wealth of stories still a waiting to be told in books, TV, movies, stage and other formats. It is not unacceptable nor inhumane to tell those stories.
And when one makes his movie, that investment must be recouped and, hopefully, some profit made. Reaping from one’s own initiative and hard work even in these circumstances is entirely acceptable, so the blinkered view of “making money from tragedies” does not arise whether it is a cheap and amateurish Riverwood effort or big-money Hollywood blockbuster.
I’m still not sure why the censorship board arose from slumber. What I do know is that even today, I can hardly walk a block without encountering countless hawkers, shops and market stalls openly selling pirated movies and music.
The Board has not only been largely blind, but often has sought to profit from the illegal trade by selling film classification stickers for DVDs that are obviously counterfeit.
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Still on Westgate, I await keenly the definitive findings in how many people perished in the terrorist attack; and the number of perps that were killed, those captured, and how many got safely got away.
After the chest-thumping, we will have to accept at some point that the terrorists succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Meanwhile we are busy trying to decipher the language introduced to us by Kenya Defence Forces chief Gen Julius Karangi and his official tweet, Maj Emmanuel Chirchir.
The soldiers who spent days in the mall before the final assault were “sanitising” the place, the general told us. Then we learnt from the major that they “repatriated” some Sh300 million. It wasn’t looting.
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