SA Music Rights Organisation board and executives flee offices to avoid members’ ire

On 10 July 2025, at an Extraordinary General Meeting, Samro COO Mpho Mofikoe stood up and addressed a roomful of members eager to hear about the results of a forensic report she had been appointed by the board to commission in 2021, to investigate allegations of internal fraud.

It was completed by Fundudzi Forensic Services in July 2023 and immediately buried. (Several requests and Promotion of Access to Information Act applications made by Daily Maverick over the course of 2024 to access the report were denied.)

Two years later, Mofikoe seemingly took matters into her own hands. 

“The Fundudzi [forensic report into allegations of irregular payments of undocumented works] was very thorough,” a visibly upset Mofikoe said. “We failed internally as Samro.”

“I know I’m going to be fired, but… I had to raise a grievance against the board because of interference that is currently taking place by the board,” she said. 

“People must be held to account. And this is not a show thing. I’ve been trying my best to keep this thing behind the scenes [because] it’s not about scoring points. My life is at risk, and the witnesses who helped immensely in this [investigation]... one of those witnesses was told to drop the case [by a Samro employee],” she said.

Mofikoe was suspended within weeks. 

Samro was once a globally respected institution, established in the 1960s to collect the royalties of southern African composers and publishers of music. Its sole purpose is to record where its members’ music is broadcast, collect and administer the revenue from those broadcasts and pay them out as royalties to its 150,000+ members.

But over the past decade, Samro has attempted to shrug off one scandal after the next, each involving tens of millions of rands in members’ royalties that have allegedly been misappropriated by its staff and its most prominent members. These include Sony Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing, Warner Chappell Music, Sheer Music Publishing, Active Music Publishing and VVP. Several of these entities have permanent seats on the board due to their dominance in the global market. 

Read more: An Embarrassment of Royalties (part one): What can break the music industry’s culture of impunity?

At the 10 July meeting, which was called by members in part to learn more about the Fundudzi report, three board members fingered in the investigation – Louise Bulley, owner of VVP Publishing, Ryan Hill, managing director of Universal Music Publishing and Rowlin Naicker, managing director of Sony Music Publishing were subsequently voted out of their seats. A follow-up meeting was requested to conclude matters, after proceedings ran well over time. 

Within weeks, Mofikoe had been suspended by Samro CEO Annabel Lebethe, reportedly for naming the implicated board members. Mofikoe also reportedly refused to hand over files related to the forensic report to Lebethe’s office, after Lebethe and the board stated they planned to issue amnesty to those implicated. 

In a written statement, Samro told Daily Maverick that Mofikoe’s “precautionary suspension” was not retaliatory. Instead, “it was in response to preliminary findings pointing to potential internal transgressions.” Samro did not clarify what those transgressions were.

Former head of Sheer Publishing, David Alexander, a long-serving Samro board member who was implicated in the Fundudzi report to the tune of millions of rands, had already secretly been given amnesty in 2023, according to at least three members with first-hand knowledge of the events, who asked to remain anonymous due to legitimate fears of reprisals.

They told Daily Maverick that the board’s chair, Nicholas Maweni, wrote an affidavit in support of Alexander’s hasty emigration to the United States to escape charges, after his visa application was denied due to investigations into his misappropriation of Samro members’ royalties. 

Alexander sat on the board for at least eight years prior to his alleged flight to the United States. He told Daily Maverick he denied that he received an affidavit from Maweni, but wrote in a WhatsApp message that if there were any specific allegations against him he “would like to see them – and I will reserve comment until I do”. 

Alexander is explicitly named in a leaked portion of the Fundudzi report, circulated by members over the past several months and seen by Daily Maverick. 

Read more: An Embarrassment of Royalties (part two): Access to information lawsuit reveals music industry’s underbelly

Denying access, denying rights

In the lead-up to its follow-up Extraordinary General Meeting on 29 August, Samro announced it would not allow the meeting to be held in a hybrid format, telling members they would only be allowed to log in online. Most of Samro’s 156,000 members live in areas with little to no internet access, or struggle to afford data costs, especially when meetings frequently last for hours at a time.

In this, Samro contravened the Companies Act by failing to secure members’ agreement to change the format of the meeting from hybrid to exclusively digital. 

Samro also scheduled the follow-up meeting to coincide exactly with the Annual General Meeting of its sister company, Sampra, using the same online meeting platform, Lumi. This created confusion among those who are members of both. The platform is reportedly so complicated to use that the login is sent to members along with a video tutorial. 

When more than 60 members arrived at Samro House on Friday to try to force their way into the meeting, regardless of the diktat from the executive, they found the seventh floor deserted, with only a security guard at the door to Samro’s offices.

In an empty cubicle, the group crowded around the phone of the only member who was able to log on to the digital platform, which was held up to a megaphone so everyone could hear. Once in the online meeting room, they found the microphone automatically muted and the screen switched off. When they raised a hand in the digital meeting to speak, they were ignored. 

Members were asked to vote to reinstate the three board members, but in the absence of witnesses or free participation, they feel the results will have no credibility. They are expected to be announced this week.

In its emailed statement, Samro wrote that it “takes the concerns of all its members and the industry at large seriously, but that “it is equally important to reiterate that the board has a fiduciary responsibility to ensure that all prescripts from a governance perspective are abided by to the letter. In doing so, Samro affirms that it is exercising duty of care and initiating a process that seeks to reflect the will of the members in a transparent and procedural manner that is correct and lawful.”

One member since 1975, gospel composer and performer William Mthethwa, told Daily Maverick that, before she was suspended, Mofikoe was able to help him confirm he had 564 songs registered with Samro. After fighting for royalties for 30 years, he was able to claw back R400,000 thanks to her efforts. He says he has been shortchanged millions of rands over the course of his career.

Samro is a members-based organisation and is required by its Memorandum of Incorporation to include those members – its primary shareholders – in decisions and actions regarding their royalties, which are Samro’s sole source of income and revenue. DM