The recent announcement by MultiChoice Zimbabwe on theminimal increases in the cost of its DStv subscriptions saw viewers take to social media threatening to cancel their subscriptions in favour of DStv subscriptions with MultiChoice South Africa.
What many Zimbabwean consumers don’t know is that this practice is illegal; it is a crime in Zimbabwe and carries hefty penalties if users are caught.
For years, the issue of cross-border piracy has been a significant challenge for MultiChoice Zimbabwe and the government.
This criminal activity involves buying MultiChoice decoders intended for one country, and taking them illegally into a different country for use.
Most commonly, MultiChoice South Africa decoders are bought under false pretences in South Africa and shipped to Zimbabwe, Botswana and other neighbouring countries for use in those regions.
It is against the law to use DStv South Africa accounts – and therefore to access DStv SA content – or decoders in Zimbabwe. Geo-locked programming intended to be viewed in one country is not allowed to be viewed in other countries.
This criminal act violates several Zimbabwean laws including the Copyright and Neighbouring Rights Act, as it infringes on the protection of intellectual property rights.
It also breaches the Broadcasting Services Act, which prohibits the unauthorised reception and distribution of broadcast content.
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More broadly speaking, using South African DStv subscriptions and devices here in Zimbabwe has a negative impact on government’s tax income revenue through lost subscription taxes, as well as on government’s custom and import duties, as decoders are illegally imported into the country, bypassing customs processes.
Beyond income and taxes, cross-border piracy poses a substantial threat to the local broadcasting industry.
The actors and actresses we love, and the production houses whose series we enjoy so much, are directly impacted upon by this piracy.
While local DStv viewers subscribing via South Africa perceive the service to be cheaper and providing greater numbers of channels than the service offered at home, this is not the case.
DStv carefully curates the content provided for Zimbabwean viewers to include programming that resonates with local audiences.
This comprises a substantial amount of local content produced specifically for Zimbabwean viewers by local production teams.
They are Zimbabweans creating content for Zimbabweans – something local audiences have long wanted.
DStv channels screening local content include ZBCtv, 3Ktv, ZTN Prime and NRtv. These channels are not available on the South African service, and are exclusive to Zimbabwean DStv subscriptions.
By including this content on its local services, DStv seeks to support local actors, musicians and song writers, writers and directors, camera and sound people, and all the people down the local content creation value chain.
This entire industry and its sustainability are threatened when local viewers choose to support the South African creative sector over our own.
More often than not, we Zimbabweans are robbing our industry of the much-needed revenue to grow.
At the end of it all we only have one Zimbabwe, and it is all our responsibility to contribute to its growth.
Not only is it the right thing to do for our economy and creative industry, but failure to do so could result in viewers being fined and facing legal prosecution.
