Our dearly beloved communications minister, Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri, has once again put her foot in her mouth, making the Department of Communications look like a total laughing stock.
Last week, during the debate on the department`s 2005 budget vote before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Communications, she stunned opposition candidates and her own party, when she announced: "I don`t want a sector to be monopolised by people who do not look like me."
The comment came as she was outlining why value-added network service (VANS) providers would not be allowed to self-provision, despite the regulator suggesting they should be allowed to, following her liberalisation announcements last year.
It thus appears that unless VANS operators are short, grey and totally clueless about what they are doing, there is little hope for them to be allowed to self-provision.
Realistically speaking, the minister cannot possibly feel that all VANS suppliers should cast themselves in her image so as to be allowed to self-provision, which leaves us with the inescapable conclusion that it was therefore some kind of racist comment.
Considering that the remark left committee members, including those of the ANC, stunned, it obviously wasn`t something that anyone expected to hear her say. Although if you take into account that last year she admitted to having been asleep in another office while the president was handing out parliamentary portfolios back in 1999, perhaps it shouldn`t have been quite so shocking.
It thus appears that unless VANS operators are short, grey and totally clueless about what they are doing, there is little hope for them to be allowed to self-provision.
Rodney Weidemann, telecoms editor, ITWeb
A real concern in industry terms is whether the comment was meant in racial terms. With so much talk of black economic empowerment and the empowerment charter being finalised, does this mean that the comment is part of the BEE process, or was the minister speaking in her personal capacity?
More to the point, if she was speaking out of turn, what will happen as a result of it?
A colleague pointed out that in a normal democracy, when a politician oversteps the mark, the people generally expect some kind of disciplinary procedure, leading to either an apology or a resignation.
So come on minister, let`s either hear you say sorry, or let`s see your resignation in writing - at least with the latter, we may finally have the chance to stimulate real and meaningful competition in the ICT sector.
Related story:
Minister stuns with `look-like-me` comment
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