Ivy fails with lowest possible score
Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri has been ranked as one of the worst ministers in the South African Governments in the Democratic Alliance’s 2008 Cabinet Report Card. Matsepe-Casaburri received a rating of 1/10 for 2008, down from 3/10 in 2007 and 4/10 in 2006.
“The Minister of Communications, Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri, and the Minister of Correctional Services, Ngconde Balfour, were the worst performers, both scraping 1/10,” the DA report says. “Minister Matsepe-Casaburri continued to pursue a failed telecommunications policy of “managed liberalization.”
“South Africa’s telecommunications industry is stagnant because of the Minister of Communications Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri’s policy of ‘managed liberalization’. In the face of sustained criticism of her management of this sector, she unsuccessfully applied in September to appeal Judge N Davis’s decisive judgment in the Altech case arguing that the ruling undermines her policy of managed liberalization. For this and many other reasons she scores 1 for this year,” the DA report states.
"Years of messy Ministerial interventions"
“The Altech ruling now brings years of messy Ministerial interventions and reversals dating back to 2004 to an end by directing that value added network service licenses can build their own networks instead of leasing from others,” the DA report says.
“Undeterred by the ruling, the Minister announced her intention to table amendments to the Electronic Communications Act (ECA) to nullify the effects of the judgment despite the fact that Parliament rewrote the ECA in 2005 to usher in full competition because managed liberalization has failed the telecoms industry in the country.”
Professor Alison Gillwald of The Edge Institute said that "…with the bottom three quintiles of South Africans paying close to 20% of their income on communication, against 5% in peer economies, consumers and businesses may well ask what drives the continued defence of the policy of managed liberalization….the agreed policy time spans for protected monopoly and duopoly services have long come and gone".
According to the DA Matsepe-Casaburri also failed to meet her own performance targets for the year. Six months into the current financial year none of the 233 Dinaledi schools which were supposed to have been connected by Sentech via a wireless network were connected. Her department is yet to equip the host stadiums for the 2010 Soccer World Cup with 100% ICT infrastructure coverage in fulfillment of ICT guarantees for the tournament.
“Another indictment was her handling of digital migration. The set of top box specifications which she persuaded Cabinet to agree to will make this decoder unnecessarily expensive to consumers even after the poor receive subsidies. While the Director-General of Communications insists it will make e-government possible, we are yet to be told how. Besides, South Africa needs more channels and choice, not e-government,” the DA report card concludes.
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