Can South Africa reclaim its vuvuzela rights?

One Chinese company is producing 10,000 vuvuzelas a day, but a church in KwaZulu-Natal claims it invented the instrument 

The Nazareth Baptist Church of KwaZulu-Natal maintains that nearly all vuvuzela manufacturers are infringing its intellectual property rights. Photograph: Carl Recine/Action Images

The sound of the vuvuzela, which has been unfavourably compared by some critics with a swarm of angry bees, has become a defining feature of the 2010 Fifa World Cup. Yet the distinctive drone also has its fans, evident from the fact that it has become the most downloaded free iPhone app in South Africa and Europe.

But the really big story to emerge in the past few days concerns the fact that 90% of the vuvuzelas sold in South Africa are being produced in China. According to latest reports, demand is greatly outstripping supply. One Chinese company, the Guangda Toy Factory, in the Zhejiang province, claims it has already despatched 1m instruments in the first four months of this year to South Africa. The factory is currently making 10,000 plastic instruments a day, but expects production to increase to 25,000 in the next few days.

However, the Nazareth Baptist Church of KwaZulu-Natal, which claims 4 million followers, maintains that nearly all manufacturers are infringing its intellectual property rights. The church, which combines Christian and traditional Zulu beliefs, claims that its founder, Isaiah Shembe, invented the vuvuzela exactly 100 years ago. The original instrument used animal horns and members of the church's congregation have traditionally blown them to mark moments of high religious intensity.

Guardian.

The migration of the instrument from sacred to secular space took place in the early 1980s when supporters of Durban's Amazulu football clubstarted to use animal horns and hollowed out sugarcane tubes to demonstrate their support for the team. In turn, the practice of using vuvuzelas was adopted by the Kaizer Chiefs, a Sowetan football team who made it popular in the Johannesburg area.

Meanwhile, the Nazareth Baptist Church had threatened to sue Masincedane Sport, a Cape Town-based company owned by Neil van Schalkwyk, which employs 70 people in its factory. Happily, a settlement was agreed between the two sides on Monday, the terms of which will be announced in the next few days. The company is now confident of generating sales of £1.8m in the course of the month-long football tournament. But a spokesman for the Nazareth Baptist Church, Enoch Mthembu, stated that it still wanted to stop cheap imports from China. "It is important for us to be recognised as the inventor of the vuvuzela. It is a South African instrument and the production is out of control now," he said.

Not everyone is convinced that the Nazareth Baptist Church can possess such finely- defined proprietary rights. A Sowetan blogger says that the vuvuzela has been in use for centuries in southern Africa and argues that it is "rather extravagant and disingenuous" for any group to claim otherwise.

Be that as it may, the market for the vuvuzela is expanding rapidly and it would be very foolish to ignore the commercial implications. Since the start of the World Cup, demand has shot up in Europe, North America and China. Now Cosatu, the biggest trade union federation in South Africa has called on the government to intervene for the sake of South African jobs.

What to do? The key business lesson in these sorts of situations, as US marketing guru, Al Ries, told me in an interview for New African last year, is that individuals, groups and companies in developing economies must establish their intellectual property rights at the earliest opportunity. "Develop a brand name and register it in every major country in the world," he advised. "Then you can launch your product." Indeed, Ries went on to provide a cautionary tale from another part of the world. "Consider the kiwi fruit from New Zealand," he said. "The country made a major error by not trade-marking the kiwi name. As a result, you can grow kiwi fruit in any country in the world."

This has had significant economic implications because although New Zealand developed the fruit from the wild Chinese gooseberry, provided a highly memorable brand name and is the world's second largest producer of the kiwi, it derives no financial benefit from the many tonnes that are grown overseas in countries such as France, Italy, Chile and the US.

Could a similar fate await the vuvuzela? It certainly seems possible. Even though Masincedane Sport has now registered the vuvuzela name, it is clear that Chinese manufacturers have achieved an effective stranglehold on the supply chain. Nevertheless, one can only hope that it is not too late for the company to regain control of its brand. After all, the World Cup is being played in South Africa to showcase the country and the rest of the continent to the biggest global audience in history, not to leverage yet even more economic growth for China.