Bring me Paris Mashile's head

...And the heads of all those who have helped to create a laughing stock out of the entire South African telecommunications industry.

As a self-described anarchist, Independent Communication Authority of SA (ICASA) chairman Paris Mashile should be able to understand the above sentiment.

I am growing tired of the South African telecoms sector being seen as an extended bad joke. It has become the sector that has developed a well-deserved reputation for obfuscation - earning it the title of "the Dog and Pony Show of Industry".

Mashile's quoted comments in the Sunday Times of 28 January, in the article "Anarchist doesn't want to be a fascist", vividly encapsulate the quagmire into which the whole sector has sunk.

His quoted replies on the issue surrounding the resignation of former ICASA CEO Jackie Manche, such as that her case has been handed over the police, actually apply to another disciplinary issue, that of former ICASA CFO Bridgette Mohala.

Furthermore, his comments about Telkom using tactics to have ICASA's rulings overturned in court and then doing what it likes, smacks of resigned indifference - not an anarchist's natural reaction.

A senior Telkom executive once told me the root of ICASA's problems lies in its lack of set procedures and that is why it has always been successful with a legal challenge against the regulator.

"We [Telkom] also want to know the boundaries, but without proper procedures, the [ICASA] findings are nonsense and not even we learn from them," he said.

So a picture begins to develop that there are no proper external or internal procedures followed by ICASA - a severe distortion, because the authority is doing some good work, such as its recently initiated hearings into interconnection fees, as required by the Electronic Communications Act.

I am growing tired of the South African telecoms sector being seen as an extended bad joke.

Paul Vecchiatto, Cape Town Correspondent

However, Mashile is not solely responsible for ICASA becoming the butt of jokes. Others have played their role.

Communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri started the trend when she usurped ICASA's role in the awarding of the second national operator's licence. Her department has exacerbated the situation by delivering muddled policy determinations, such as the "liberalisation announcement" of 2004 that ICASA interpreted to mean value-added network services were allowed to self-provide and then a ministerial press release said they were not.

Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Communications also has not fulfilled its oversight role. As the elected representatives of the people, the committee has protected institutions that have been answerable to it, rather than deliver the hard questions, demand the answers and keep these institutions accountable.

Hopefully Parliament is getting its act together. A proposal by the Democratic Alliance (DA) seemed to be warmly received by its African National Congress counterparts that hearings should be conducted into the state of ICASA. Hopefully these hearings will lead to constructive measures that are needed to sort out the mess.

The DA's Dene Smuts rightly feels the situation at ICASA is "intolerable" and that something has to be done. She has not gone as far as calling for Mashile's head, but there are many others - even ANC politicians - who are privately beginning to mutter that he should be axed.

It must be noted that Mashile's position as chairman was a Presidential appointment made under the old ICASA Act. It is yet to be determined how Parliament would change this position.

An ICASA insider privately said changing the chairman would not really solve anything. "It would just increase the infighting that has been plaguing us for a long time, because all sorts of people would start jockeying for power."

The air of optimism that prevailed in 2005 when Parliament passed the Electronic Communications Act has since all but evaporated. Rather a sense of depression that nothing is changing has set in.

We need a regulator that will impose order, not one whose chairman believes anarchism rules.

It is not only Mashile's head I want. I want the heads of all those who allowed this situation to happen, even if it means baskets full of them, because I have had bucketfuls of this nonsense.