No it is not a joke. It is true.
A constitutional court in Zimbabwe delivered a landmark ruling ordering every Zimbabwean citizen to pay the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) licence fees irrespective of the service provider one may select to use.
This means that any citizen with a gadget capable of receiving radio and television signals must pay Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) license fees. This automatically means that any person that has a mobile phone with a radio feature or even a laptop that streams videos is liable to pay the ZBC license fee.
According to a report in a local news service, Newsday, the court ruled that citizens were not being asked to pay for the services provided for by ZBC but were compelled to pay tax for possessing such gadgets.
The court made this ruling in a case involving Bernard Wekare and Musangano Lodge challenging the constitutionality of provisions of the Broadcasting Services Act (Chapter 12:06) on funding of public broadcasting services.
It is either the ruling is not considering the functionalities of current day gadgets or it is another way of for the government parastatal to generate funds.
