Chairperson, hon colleagues, if the Department of Communications was closed down, would South Africa's information and communications technology sector miss it? [Interjections.] What difference would its disappearance make to the way South Africa functions? These questions were asked of the department's leadership during the Communications portfolio committee's recent interactions with it. The questions went unanswered.
One of the tragedies of South Africa's fledgling democracy is that it has been so thoroughly undermined by government departments that are critical to the liberation of our people. Education and Communications are two of these. The Department of Communications has, during the past 20 years, failed to grasp that its core role should be to develop policy and regulate an information and communications ecosystem. This ecosystem would enable citizens to use technology to overcome generations of oppression and disadvantage so they can prosper.
The department has taken a few tentative steps to liberalise the market and bring in competition. The half-hearted liberalisation of fixed-line infrastructure through the privatisation of Telkom was a start, but then government hobbled this by holding the majority of its shares. The folly of this was proved last year when the hon Minister pulled the plug on Telkom's turnaround deal with the Korea Telecom Corporation. This was then compounded by her nave interference in the company's annual general meeting, a move that jeopardised its corporate governance. It has yet to recover and produce a coherent strategy that is better than the one the Minister destroyed.
Government must sell its stake in Telkom. Telkom must become a willing collaborator in a wholesale infrastructure consortium that forms the backbone of a ubiquitous, high-speed, affordable, robust communications ecosystem.
The department lacks the appropriate skills to be the custodian of the ICT environment that sparks opportunities for economic growth and global competitiveness. Who can take seriously the strategists who place broadband as their top priority of the year and then ranked the availability of the radio spectrum at number 8? You cannot have the one without the other. This indicates a serious lack of appropriate skills and understanding at the very top of the department.
Its finances have been a mess for years and it fails to achieve most of its targets. The programmes and entities it oversees also fail to meet their targets. Few deadlines are ever met. A few pointers from Parliament's research unit for the Finance and Public Accounts Cluster that landed on our desks last week state this, and I quote:
Over the five-year period until the fiscal year 2011, the Department of Communications and the Department of Public Works were two of the lowest- spending departments. The worst perpetrators of fiscal dumping include the Department of International Relations and Co-operation and the Department of Communications. The Department of Communications emerged as the worst-spending department, at only 66,8%.
This negligence to do the job properly starts at the top. The hon Minister neglects her obligations in respect of parliamentary oversight. At the end of last year, she left 28 parliamentary questions unanswered - the second highest tally of all the Ministries, and so far this year's performance does not look much better.
Now, there are those who will say the hon Minister has been in this post for only one and a half years and that she needs to be given time to turn around the damage of her predecessors. Perhaps that is true, but let us look at what the Minister has achieved so far.
She initiated an ICT policy review process that was long overdue. However, it took a year to be assembled and, with acknowledgement to the panel that met for the first time at the end of January, produced its policy framing paper for comment. I am concerned that, instead of instigating a positive disruption that would release creativity about the ICT ecosystem, the panel is split into conventional silos that could steer them in a direction that serves political rather than national needs. The department has rushed out six new pieces of legislation, four of which the Minister mentioned. Of particular concern is the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa Amendment Bill that emasculates this Chapter 9 regulator by vesting much of its powers in a proposed Spectrum Management Agency. This promises to be another bureaucracy for cronies in search of inflated salaries and tenders to manipulate.
Do the hard stuff, hon Minister. Fix Icasa. Give it the money and skilled resources it needs to do its job properly, and resolve the policy development conflicts. Put nontechnical legislative changes on hold until the policy review is completed.
Then there is the ICT indaba, famous for all the wrong reasons. The outcome of this indaba is one of my many unanswered parliamentary questions loitering in the Minister's in-tray. In March I asked for details on the progress of the task team formed to implement the indaba's resolutions. The Minister is silent only on these matters of substance.
Next, there is the matter of the Minister's unlawful action to unilaterally switch the responsibility for the set-top box control system from free-to- air broadcasters to Sentech, clearing the way for the Minister's preferred supplier, Nagravision, to implement the control system. E.tv's rightful legal challenge took eight months and stalled the digital migration process. Now the hon Minister bewails e.tv's legal challenge as the cause of the delay in rolling out digital terrestrial television, DTT. How delusional is this? You may believe your spin, hon Minister, but the rest of the nation does not. You cannot duck your negative impact on this process.
Another question not yet answered by the Minister is this: What was the legal cost to defend itself against e.tv? The portfolio committee was told by Sentech and departmental officials that the legal bill for this ministerial whim is about R1,4 million. Sentech's bill alone was R798 000 and the department's is R579 000, and rising. Why is the Minister too embarrassed to answer the question herself?
This brings us to the SABC, whose legacy of inappropriate and possibly illegal appointments to executive management will cripple this organisation for many more years to come. One of the reasons the ANC deployees on the previous board were told to resign may well be because they were far too diligent in evaluating the bids for the set-top box access control system.
At one of her last meetings with the previous board, the Minister instructed it to accept the Nagravision bid. Why? Is it because Nagravision and its local agent, African Union Communications, submitted a bid that was R47 million more expensive than the two other bids on the table? Who, Minister, stand to profit from your influence? [Interjections.] By the way, whatever happened to broadband, local loop unbundling and spectrum allocation? These are the critical issues that South Africa needs unlocked so it can become a globally competitive economic powerhouse - and the department shows no urgency in driving them. National Treasury has put a hold on funding broadband until the department comes up with a coherent, acceptable policy and plan to implement it. Another draft broadband policy was recently put out for public comment - but it was a lukewarm effort, and is overshadowed by the National Development Plan's chapter on ICT which, incidentally, had little input from the department.
This brings me to the issue of the allocation of much sought-after spectrum. An audit of what spectrum is available and is being used has been done and is being kept under wraps. Why? There must be transparency on what is a national resource so we can see what is being used and how much is available before it is priced and released to the market. If there is secrecy, we stand a real risk of paying too much for access to a resource that may not be scarce at all. With regard to local loop unbundling, which would bring down the cost of fixed-line access and increase demand for fixed broadband services, there are regulations being drafted for comment, but again, urgency is lacking, and the deadline for these is set for next March.
While all this prevarication is going on, South Africa is slipping further and further down the rankings of ICT-empowered nations. In 2003 the World Economic Forum's Networked Readiness Index ranked South Africa at 37. Now, we are down at 72.
The GSM Association, a body that represents mobile telephony operators worldwide, has opened its Africa office in Nairobi, because that has become the African hub of mobile communications. This is a pity, because our mobile application developers keep winning international accolades. Of 30 top brilliant African technology start-ups, as determined last year by Ventureburn, 13 were from South Africa - the highest number from any nation. Many of these are based in Cape Town, which is rapidly becoming the location of choice for high-powered creative talent. They are coming to this city and the Western Cape because, where it governs, the DA delivers on technology's opportunities for interactive service delivery for all the people who want to live and work here. [Interjections.]
By 2020 every resident of Cape Town will have access to broadband infrastructure in excess of 100MB per second. [Interjections.] This critical nervous system will turn Cape Town into an opportunity city, a city that attracts investors and innovators to establish growing, globally competitive enterprises that work and offer work opportunities to small, medium and micro enterprises, SMMEs, and individuals with a passion to excel and contribute to our nation's growth. [Interjections.] A globally competitive infrastructure is what the rest of South Africa can expect from the DA when it wins the national government in 2019. That is six years away. [Applause.]
So, will we miss the Department of Communications if it is closed down? I think the nation would prosper without it.
HON MEMBERS: Hear, hear! [Applause.]