Stephen Sipho Mncube, the newly appointed successor of Paris Mashile as chairman of ICASA, has a full CV, but one that does him little credit.
In the early 1970s, after obtaining a degree in Library Science, a Masters in Social Science and a PhD specialising in Adult Education from the University of Syracuse, as well as a Bachelor of Science in "general studies" from the University of Rochester, he has held various positions at universities and government agencies in the United States since.
Despite the apparent series of failures with which Mncube has been associated, his reputation is good.
Ivo Vegter, ITWeb contributor
Since his return to South Africa around the first democratic elections in 1994, he took a position at the Development Bank of Southern Africa, in an indeterminate role described as Development Information Business Manager.
The telecommunications sector was introduced to him when he became chairman of the ill-fated National Information Technology Forum in 1997. Although influential in the early days of telecommunications policy development, the organisation, which had been formed within the Office of the Presidency to set the policy agenda, quickly became irrelevant as the Department of Communications broke with its consultation with the NITF, and Telkom's equity partner began calling the shots in the writing of the first Telecommunications Act.
"By the end of 1997 the NITF had lost most of its legitimacy," says an IDRC Information Policy Handbook, a popular research document that was much consulted in the 1990s. "Much of the work was carried out by a small group of people. Due to the declining attendance at public meetings, the Board remained the only organisational structure where the visions and interests of the different sectors were discussed. Although the organisation still plays a certain clearing-house function, without a direct political goal, it has currently lost much of its negotiating and political power."
To the extent that the NITF, which involved a great number of representatives from government, business, labour, academia and civil society organisations, had any influence on the development of policy, this policy has often been derided for its naive and idealistic - some say "woolly" - approach to the "information society".
Mncube's Who's Who Southern Africa entry, which has been updated with his new appointment, says he was chairman of the NITF until this year, although it has been defunct for almost a decade.
Mncube has also held the post of chairman of Sentech, a function that he cited in 2000 as his best professional achievement. Whether many will agree that the state-owned signal distributor is a favourable entry on a r'esum'e is doubtful. It has, over the years, faced increasingly desperate situations, ranging from management conflict, to its lack of funding for delivering mandated infrastructure such as digital terrestrial television, to its abject failure in the consumer wireless Internet access space.
A recent report to the Department of Communications was damning in its indictment of Sentech, and described the leadership of the company as "weak". Form its "financially thorny position", the report appealed for a rapid and urgent turnaround. According to ITWeb, officials at the National Treasury have described Sentech as government's "trouble child".
Despite the apparent series of failures with which Mncube has been associated, his reputation is good. He is known as a competent chairman, and has served in that capacity for many enterprises. A source close to the NITF says that in spite of his strong links to many activists, Mncube has a mild, conciliatory manner, which was perceived to bring people together.
Having said that, however, the source - who needless to say insisted on anonymity - turns on Mncube: "My own view is that a chairman needs to have a strong personality to bind his committee or board together to accomplish activities, rather than keep drifting towards consensus without outcomes. My view is based on looking back at the institutions that he has been associated with and judging whether anyone would perceive him to have catalysed or driven successful outcomes. To be honest, I thought he had retired. Frankly, I do not see ICASA's performance improving."
ICASA's independence will continue to erode in favour of minister Siphiwe Nyanda, if the draft ICASA Amendment Bill survives as it was recently published. In this light, a conciliatory, consensus-building chairman may be exactly what the minister desires.
However, such a leader does not fill one with confidence that ICASA's bite will become any more dangerous to the cartel of big operators that dominate the South African telecommunications landscape - thanks, in part, to the NITF's policy work back in the 1990s.
Whether ICASA will pursue its tough challenges with vim and vigour under this new leadership has to remain a matter of grave doubt.
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