Kwese TV has never applied for a licence to operate in Zim

An unnamed source that spoke to The Herald claims that Kwese TV has never applied to operate in Zimbabwe.

Said the anonymous source:

We don’t know on what basis this discussion around Kwese is coming in, because Kwese has not lodged an application for a licence for distributing foreign content. The application that was lodged and was considered in the affirmative is that of Dr Dish, and this was to distribute a foreign content service, which has since been discontinued in Southern Africa called My TV. Now, the whole argument being raised is trying to suggest that change of content supplier is immaterial to the licence.

Government does not license people to sell doughnuts or biscuits in Zimbabwe. They are licensed to introduce foreign content into Zimbabwe’s airwaves, so the issue of supplier and nature of content is the soul of that licensing process. If there is a change of supplier, that is a material fact of the licensing process, and because there has been that change, the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe is correct to have cancelled that licence and in any event, they cancelled it after an inordinately long period of inactivity to that licence — not just absence of activity, but also even failure to pay basic charges which comes with that licence, which means it’s clear that there was no capacity in the first place.

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