THIS IS WHY DSTV IS TAKING ZAMBIANS FOR A RIDE

Scoop Editorial Comment

IF there is a bunch of individuals who are dwanzy, unpatriotic, and good-for-nothing when it comes to international trade, we are up there as Zambians. Some of us are simply clowns that have reduced themselves to social media jerks and excited keyboard champions who will support any nonsense even when it does not benefit us in any way.

It was only yesterday when some Zambians took to social media to condemn the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) of Zambia for making a decision to suspend all Kenya Airways flights into Zambia, a decision which was supposed to take effect from Tuesday, October 8, 2024.

For the sake of those who were blindly insulting CAA and defending Kenyan authorities over the matter, we will break it down for you; some time back, Zambia Airways sought approval from the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) to operate scheduled flights from Lusaka, to Nairobi, Kenya.

While KCAA granted Zambia Airways a Foreign Operators Permit, they denied authorization for the airline to use a wet-leased B737-700 aircraft on the Nairobi route.

Despite several appeals from Zambia, KCAA remained firm in its decision. The Zambian Ministry of Transport and Logistics made multiple attempts to resolve the issue, including sending a letter on July 26, 2024, to Kenya’s Minister of Transport. Still, nothing was done. In fact, Kenya did not even bother to respond over the matter.

In a further effort to resolve the matter, Zambian officials held a meeting on September 12, 2024, with Kenya’s Acting High Commissioner to Zambia. During this meeting, Zambia submitted all the necessary documentation related to the issue.

Despite assurances from the Kenyan side that feedback would be provided, no resolution was reached. On October 1, 2024, Zambian CAA officials reached out to KCAA via email to discuss the situation but received no response.

In light of the continued lack of reciprocity and engagement, Zambia yesterday took a step to suspend Kenya Airways’ operations into Zambia. The suspension was expected to impact Kenya Airways flights into Lusaka until the two nations could find a solution to the dispute.

The letter formalizing the suspension was signed by Capt. Derrick F. Lueembe, Director General of the Zambian Civil Aviation Authority but before we could understand what the problem was, the social media jackals in Zambia took turns to demonise CAA over the decision.

Some went as far as claiming that Kenya had nothing to lose and that this would lead to Zambia being isolated by the international community. As usual, others looked at this development through political lenses and went as far as attacking the Zambian Government that it lacked diplomacy.  

For the sake of the uninitiated, reciprocity is a mutual exchange between countries, where one state’s actions or concessions are met with similar responses from another state. This principle can manifest in various forms, such as trade agreements, diplomatic recognition, military alliances, and cultural exchanges. Essentially, it is based on the idea that if one country extends a favour, privilege, or concession to another, the latter is expected to reciprocate in kind.

The importance of reciprocity, among other things, is that it encourages cooperation. By establishing a framework where actions are reciprocated, countries are incentivized to cooperate on a range of issues, including trade, security, and environmental challenges. This can lead to more productive and collaborative relationships.

Reciprocity helps ensure that relationships between countries are perceived as fair. When one country grants a benefit, the expectation of reciprocity helps to balance the relationship and prevents feelings of exploitation or inequality.

As a matter of fact, reciprocity can help stabilize international relations by creating a predictable environment. When countries understand that their actions will be met with corresponding actions, it reduces the likelihood of misunderstandings and conflicts and that is what Zambia did and before sunset, Kenya sat up and granted immediate permission to Zambia Airways.

Contrary to opposing views on Zambia’s action, Kenya weighed the opportunity cost of not cooperating with Zambia and realised they stood to lose from this tiff and before sunset, did what was expected of them. As usual, those who were making noise on social media went quiet as if they were not the ones who were acting more informed on social media and this is where we miss it as citizens because we do not know when we must unite and speak with one voice. Politics have really damaged our heads to a point where even on issues where we must have consensus, we pride in unnecessary political gibberish.

This brings us to the issue of how Multi-choice has continued messing up its Zambian clientele while we watch like zombies. Multi-choice has not only continued exploiting Zambians with exorbitant subscription fees, but has continued giving us Zambians a very poor service.

People have complained for a very long time over this issue but no one is willing to do what is right and that includes regulators such as the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) whose mandate, among other things, is to ensure that consumers are protected from unfair trading practices.

At any slightest depreciation of the Kwacha, Multi-choice, through DSTV Zambia, will adjust their prices upwards because they claim to use the exchange rate to fix their prices yet when the same Kwacha appreciates, they act like nothing has happened.

We now have prolonged hours of load shedding but Multi-choice is quite like everything is okay yet Zambians only utilize their services for a few hours. Doesn’t this amount to exploitation of the consumer? Isn’t this the case that dwanzies at CPCC must be following keenly since their role is also to protect consumers?

It is not rocket science that DSTV Zambia is stealing from us while continuing to give us poor content. Those who subscribe to watch movies be it Nollywood, Bollywood, name them, are not spared from mediocre services ranging from repeated movies to watching the same actors the whole month. The repeats have now gone to NatGeo Wild and many other channels.

For Zambian football, it is even an insult to the fans. DSTV really thinks we are dull; and maybe we are. They did not only scrap off match previous and reviews for our league, they have introduced AI cameras which are not only providing very poor quality but have made watching our games live on TV an eyesore. They have not done this in South Africa but in Zambia because they know how passive we are to issues that affect us.

Those useless AI cameras they are piloting in Zambia are a total disaster where a player can be scoring a goal while the camera is panning over some beautiful girls in the terraces. Surely, which league in the whole world has the technology which does not even have a provision for slow motion pictures?

DSTV is now subjecting us to what we used to watch on ZNBC donkey years back where if you missed an action, then you missed it and you would not see again due to lack of the playback technology. It was as if you were watching the game live at the stadium and this is what DSTV has blessed us with again.

Unfortunately, we have not forgotten how football commentator Chibulu Musonda was recently abused for raising these concerns by his fellow Zambians and it is this nonsense that has given DSTV the leeway to misbehave in Zambia; something they cannot do anywhere else.  

Realistically speaking, whoever bewitched us Zambians, died a long time ago because if he was still alive, he would at least feel pity for us.