Exit, pursued by a bear

The most famous of all Shakespeare's stage directions: “Exit, pursued by a bear”, comes to mind when thinking of former Department of Communications director-general Lyndall Shope-Mafole's sudden departure.

Lined up in the wings is the image of another shaggy, growling beast, with big teeth - her former boss, communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri.

They are the most closely identified personalities with the bizarre state of our telecommunications sector that has laboured under the policy of “managed liberalisation”. It has not managed to do much except sow confusion and facilitate the ripping-off of the consumer.

One can argue this confusion has also led to a slowing of the country's economic growth rate, as the high cost of communications has been cited time and again as a business inhibitor. Ironically, whenever an effort has been made to unlock this situation, all that has happened is the bureaucracy has expanded and things stay the same.

Altech's court action, which forced the freeing up of the sector, showed just what a farce policy-making has been for at least the last four years. Matsepe-Casaburri's replying affidavit was itself a strong case for liberalisation. It contradicted itself, acknowledged that her infamous press release of January 2005 had no legal standing and yet it insisted the market should not be opened up.

Then we have the issue of the international capacity bottleneck. As soon as a private company found a solution, in that it got organised and started to lay an East Coast cable, government was swift to make a grand pronouncement of its own initiatives that are still floundering.

Every organisation within the DOC's portfolio has been touched by some kind of management crisis or scandal during the past four years.

Paul Vecchiatto, Cape Town correspondent

Uhurunet, the grand scheme to encircle Africa with cable and lay a terrestrial fibre-optic spine, is probably best described as an organisation without a face - no structure, no head, no money and no backside to kick. Watch for this entity to quietly slip below the waves without a trace.

The migration of our TV broadcasting system from analogue to digital is really a laugh a minute. No strategy, apart from some pronouncements, an insistence that the country will “manufacture” the decoders, when we really only have the ability to assemble them, and not enough money for Sentech to do the switchover. It all just spells disaster.

If you think the service delivery protests were bad, just wait until you see the temper millions of sports fans will display when they can't watch soccer or rugby.

Every organisation within the DOC's portfolio has been touched by some kind of management crisis or scandal during the past four years.

Telkom is in the throes of a power struggle. Matsepe-Casaburri had a great round of fire-the-CEO and then fire-his-successor at the SA Post Office. The SABC is not sure if it has a board or not, a CEO or not, a news director or not. The Universal Service and Access Agency of SA has no idea if it is responsible for anything at all, but it has a lot of acting chiefs.

Even Sentech, which is closely associated with Matsepe-Casaburri's napping habits, had its own little management nightmare two years ago.

Sector regulator ICASA had its amusing management expos'es, but its real problem is trying to work out if it really issues licences, or if it is another branch of the SA Revenue Service.

The e-rate saga, the discounted rate for schools connectivity, proves you can cheapen anything, especially if no one actually knows what it is.

An alphabet soup of committees that fall under the DOC's umbrella, such as the PNC on ISAD, PIAC and the shadowy e-Africa Commission, prove that talk is expensive, especially if gatherings of the wise are held at private game lodges, but without implementation it is still just talk.

But they are not the only two actors on this stage. There is a whole cast of others, including petty bureaucrats who don't know that their boss has actually left the building; business people who talk liberalisation, but will do anything for a special consideration; and politicians who only want answers now because elections are on the way.

“What we'll do in the next Parliament is subpoena these people to get to the bottom of this terrible situation,” a member of Parliament told me privately the other day.

My private thoughts to that were: “You did nothing while it was happening. I hope you and all those others also take the exit and are pursued by a pack of bears with sore heads and light wallets.”