Opposition decries move on Icasa posts/National assembly passes ICASA names

Opposition parties have objected to two Department of Communications officials being shortlisted for appointment to the independent communications regulator, saying it allowed the minister control through the back door.

During debate in parliament on Tuesday, DA MP Dene Smuts said Icasa was a chapter 9 constitutional body and had to be independent from government.

"The minister … tried throughout last year not only to remove the regulator's independence, first in the law and then constitutionally, but also to subvert the declared intentions of the National Assembly at that time to retain and respect that independence," said Smuts.

The IFP's Suzanne Vos said apart from being opposed to the two Icasa officials, those on the list lacked the expertise required by Icasa, while excellent candidates had been rejected. She described the short-listing of the officials as a "cynical and seemingly naked attempt by the ministry to control Icasa".

Freedom Front Plus MP Pieter Mulder said he too was opposed to the two officials and that parliament had become a rubber stamp to accept what the minister wanted.

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The authority was supposed to be an independent regulator.

“I cannot express my dismay sufficiently strongly, and I don’t know to what end one spends all these months legislating good law, when this happens at the end of the process,” she said (Dene Smuts, DA MP on Communications Portfolio Committee).

The list of candidates to be sent to Matsepe-Casaburri was passed by 179 votes to 55. There were three abstentions.

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