A new Department of Communications (DOC) director-general should be someone who has industry's confidence and is able to accomplish results rather than just pay lip service, analysts say.
They were reacting to news yesterday of Lyndall Shope-Mafole's sudden departure as the most senior public servant in the DOC after fours years in the post.
Late yesterday, the DOC issued a statement saying communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri and Shope-Mafole had agreed to release the latter from her duties as director-general with immediate effect.
No announcement has been made yet as to who Shope-Mafole's replacement will be, or even when the post will be advertised.
Matsepe-Casaburri was Shope-Mafole's immediate political boss and the two have been most often blamed for the non-performance of the department and the drawn out liberalisation of the telecommunications sector - a factor that has been cited as key to the relatively high costs consumers pay for their connections.
Shope-Mafole, who has admitted that her real interests lie in politics, defected from the ruling African national Congress to join the breakaway Congress of the People in November and became head of its international relations portfolio.
“Shope-Mafole was always thought to be part of the bureaucratic part of the DOC and a new director-general would have to be someone who can formulate and implement policy quickly and efficiently,” says Lindsey Mc Donald, an analyst at consultancy Frost & Sullivan.
Mc Donald says the DOC needs a revamp of its leadership and people who have industry experience.
“Look at the improvement in the Department of Health. That is because someone has been appointed there who understands the needs of the people on the ground and the DOC needs to do the same,” she says.
Mc Donald says a new director-general would have to understand why industry worked so hard to ensure that value-added network services licensees are able to obtain full electronic network service licences, giving them similar, if not the same, rights as the incumbent operators.
Richard Hurst, an analyst at International Data Corporation, says the telecommunications sector, in particular, changes very fast and so someone who is able to make changes and implement policy “on the fly” is needed.
“The DOC will have to gain industry's confidence, because over the past few years industry has literally given up on the department,” he says.
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