Cable policy slammed

By Paul Vecchiatto, ITWeb Cape Town correspondent

Johannesburg, 12 Sept 2007

Opposition parties, the Democratic Alliance (DA) and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), have railed against communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casburri's stance on undersea cable ownership, saying she wants to control telecommunications.

They were reacting to the minister's speech, delivered earlier this week at Telkom's Southern African Telecommunications Networks and Applications Conference, held in Mauritius. She said government would require all undersea cables landing here to be majority-owned by South African companies.

Matsepe-Casaburri also announced that guidelines would be drawn up and they would be consistent with SA's foreign policy, and take into account the country's security.

DA communications spokesperson Dene Smuts said the Mauritius "clarification" on undersea cables confirms the Department of Communications' (DOC) desire to get a slice of the pie and to control telecommunications.

"Her insistence that all cables landing here must be majority South African-owned is a mathematical impossibility if each African country makes similar demands. It is also contrary to SA's interests to prevent the landing of the capacity we need," she said.

Suzanne Vos, IFP communications spokesperson, said: "This kind of power politics has to stop. The country desperately needs bandwidth to meet its own economic development objectives and to ensure the guarantees signed by the minister for the 2010 Soccer World Cup are met."

Vos added: "It is no wonder that public enterprises minister Alec Erwin has stepped in as the country's alternative communications minister, because the incumbent can't get things done."

She also referred Matsepe-Casaburri to the Electronic Communications Act that effectively brings government interference in the telecommunications sector to an end.

Smuts said the DOC's championing of the Nepad ICT Broadband Infrastructure Network has already blocked the East African Submarine Cable System cable.

"The minister said in Mauritius that any cables landing here would have to become part of the Nepad Network. That network will operate under a protocol that gives each signed-up African government a controlling golden share.

"She has already told her DG [Lyndall Shope-Mafole, DOC director-general], who is the driving force behind the protocol, to take SA's landing guidelines to the interim intra-governmental assembly."

Smuts concluded by saying: "No one can make head or tail of the minister's thinking, or her DG's initiatives. The only thing that is clear is that both SA telecoms ministries-public enterprises and communications are reinstating state telecoms against the tide of liberalisation and modern economic trends."

Vincent Gore, who was communications spokesperson for the Independent Democrats, refused to comment as he was in the process of crossing the floor to the African National Congress.