New verification method for NAMA

THE National Arts Council of Zimbabwe has engaged Tribe 263, a web development company for its collation and verification of votes in a bid to make voting free and fair.

This comes in the wake of controversy surrounding the selection of nominees for the National Arts Merit Awards slated for tomorrow at the 7 Arts Theatre. Previously, people were only allowed to vote for an artist of their choice in the People’s Choice Award category but that has since changed, as there are seven categories from which the public can choose.

The categories are Outstanding Actor/Actress, Outstanding Visual Artist, Outstanding Dancer/Group and the Outstanding Author. The other three are Best Artist/Group, Best Song and Best Urban Grooves Artiste. For the first four awards, there will be a straight voting system, which means that there is no nomination process while for the Best Awards, there would be a nomination of the possible nominees and only the top four will then be selected.

Once the top four have been selected, it means people will now choose who they want to win from the four nominees. At this point, the public may only vote for the nominees that were shortlisted and voting will close at 9pm on the night of the Nama awards.

There are two ways that allow people to vote with one of them being sending an SMS or on-line. There are two cellular providers Econet and Telecel that allow people to vote and the short codes for Econet subscribers is 167 while those on Telecel would use 480. Online voting is limited to one vote an hour while those who SMS will be charged US$0,50 and it allows you to vote as many times as you possibly can.

However, there are prizes for those who vote in these categories including holiday vouchers and tickets to the show as attendance is strictly by invitation. The People’s Choice Award will be given to the most favourite artist in a particular sector. Whoever gets nominated will have their website created for free courtesy of Tribe 263.

The public is encouraged to also cast their votes in all categories including music, visual arts, dance, film and television, theatre and literary arts. The ninth edition of Nama will be held under the theme ‘Together As One’ and will feature performances by Amavithikazi and a Botswana group called Culture Spear.

The two groups will hold shows at Sports Diner soon after the awards ceremony and then another show at Extra Mile on Sunday. The shows are meant to promote people-to-people relations between Zimbabweans and Batswanas.

The Embassy of the Republic of Botswana facilitated the Culture Spear visit. The Herald