We have a new communications minister: Siphiwe Nyanda. We have a new man heading up the department tasked with ensuring South African individuals and businesses communicate with each other freely and cheaply. The ministry that chooses the councillors that staff the regulator that sets sensible policies timeously, in an environment conducive to growth and development, of businesses and of local expertise.
In some dream world.
Instead, we have got a man with no history in telecoms, and who, as SANDF chief, was instrumental in pushing through the highly irregular acquisition of billions in weapons in a secretive process. He takes a job almost defined by an acrimonious relationship between government and industry, and a regulator that alternates between clumsy nose-poking-into-things-it-should-leave-to-the-market and timid vacillation.
But that's South African politics, and South African telecoms. Nothing new there.
By far the greater concern is that he is a military mind; a mind that could wreak havoc not only on the growth of our telecoms industry, but on our freedoms and privacies.
The military mind is bred on a diet of paranoia and is obsessed with control. Which is fine and good when it comes to defence, security and war. It's not fine and good when it comes to the right of legitimate businesses and law-abiding citizens to go about their business.
What is the actual rand cost of a small handful of criminals using cellphones to manage their henchmen, versus the actual rand benefit of millions of South Africans growing the economy and earning money? Think RICA. What is the actual risk of a crazy terrorist doing something unspeakable to innocents versus the actual reality of millions of us living in relative peace and security? Think Patriot Act.
Balancing act
Security against vague threats must be balanced against the vastly more important right to earn a living, grow your business and engage in any lawful activity you choose without onerous regulation or sweeping violations of your privacy.
The creep of Orwellian policies is a very real danger for us in SA. In two of the safest countries in the world, zealous control-obsessed politicians are not only telling consenting adults what is or is not good for them, they are also constructing a massive, all-powerful system to monitor what they do.
The military mind is bred on a diet of paranoia and is obsessed with control.
Roger Hislop, head of digital division, Sentient Communications
In the UK, home secretary Jacqui Smith has an obsession to not only control the Internet, but also sneak backdoor regulations through to create a surveillance society. If you have any doubts as to how far the UK government wants to take it, a key programme is called “Mastering the Internet”. After massive protest, she backed off from plans to create an all-knowing government database of every Internet mouse-click, only to reintroduce it as a requirement for ISPs to do it instead.
And then we have the Great Australian Firewall, the “someone think of the children” filter that will keep Australians safe from paedophiles, child porn... and well, whatever gets added to the secret blacklist by unknown censors. The plan was recently scuttled by political opposition, but comms minister Stephen Conroy is anything if not persistent. It will be back.
Give us freedom!
So we return to our new minister. To the military mind, security is the ultimate objective. Gathering intelligence is the highest priority, and assuming the worst is the best-case scenario. Throw in vague ominous rumblings about terrorism and child abuse, and rationalising more government controls becomes overwhelming.
Which will bring more of a twinkle to the eyes of a military man: grappling with the complex and subtle intricacies of spectrum sharing and Net neutrality and local loop unbundling, or fiddling with the Regulation of Interception of Communications laws? Supporting new telecoms entrepreneurs, or ploughing resources into attempts to register all SA's mobile users?
Nyanda is only days into the job, so speculation is premature. However, it's vital that the telecoms industry, telecoms consumers and business groups start lobbying the ministry now to make sure our new political leaders understand telecoms thrives only in a free market - free of interference, free of onerous legislation, free of censorship, free of paranoia and obsession with security.
Please, comrade minister, leave behind the interventionist habits of your predecessors, whose policies hurt both business and the poor, cost us billions in infrastructure investments that were never made, and 10 years of Internet development. Leave behind the military mind, and the mindset that suits the waging of war. Embrace telecoms positivism - that a growing economy, cheap communications and gainful employment will do more to reduce crime and poverty than any number of regulations.
Leave the paranoia and military mindset to the ministers of state security, police and defence. That's their job. It's no longer yours.
* Roger Hislop heads up the digital division at Sentient Communications.
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