Deputy Speaker, the Telkom crisis clearly illustrates to South Africa and to our global trading partners that this ANC government is a rank amateur at managing businesses and protecting the value of state assets. Telkom's share price has halved in two years. Now the ANC is playing with an idea to merge government's three underperforming communications entities into one underperforming state-owned entity. Or maybe it will nationalise Telkom, which is likely to tempt it to revert to its market bullying tactics to protect its turf and forever fight legal challenges to its uncompetitive behaviour.
Hon Minister Pule demonstrated very clearly, during the Telkom/KT Corporation negotiations, that this government negotiates in bad faith with foreign investors and cannot be trusted. So we are unlikely to attract any better offers than those that were on the table three months ago. Will this government sell its communications infrastructure to a South African-led consortium of efficient companies to be managed as a national asset on which to grow the economy? If not, why not?