Ponzi schemes at state level
FORGET Barry Tannenbaum the biggest Ponzi scheme in South Africa is being run by the SABC.
Having blown what is a protected monopoly and run up debts of R800-million at the last estimate, those geniuses in Auckland Park now want a surcharge on all TVs and DVDs sold.
A year before the 2010 World Cup, for which it is the official broadcaster, it has dug itself into such a hole that it seems the R2-billion government bail-out it is asking for is now necessary to spare the country massive embarrassment.
While board members took first-class trips to the Caribbean for the Cricket World Cup in 2007, and the chief executive Dali Mpofu and the board wasted millions in taxpayers money on lawyers’ fees, the SABC has effectively been stealing from its local suppliers.
There are countless heart-breaking stories of small independent producers facing financial ruin because the SABC can’t pay them — or won’t. Some have told me how they’ve remortgaged their own houses, others are in millions of rands worth of debt. All have bona fide contracts with a state-funded company that can’t get it together to pay its bills. Now the SABC wants more taxpayers’ money. Madness.
Former SABC chairman Kanyi Mkonza admitted this week that she “sucks as a leader”, but she isn’t the only one.
It’s no better at several other state-owned institutions. Eskom is trying to get the consumer to foot its bill for upgrades while its executives took performance bonuses. South African Airways is routinely caught napping when the currency or fuel costs fluctuate and the less we say about Telkom’s grasp of reality, the better.
Of course, Telkom is part of my beat, so as much as I’d like not to go over it, here are a few key pointers from its results announcement to the end of March.
In short, it is in trouble. What is it doing about it? It’s hard to tell, but I’m sure it will also deliver executive performance bonuses.
Arthur Goldstuck, a fearless former journalist and now the managing director of researchers World Wide Worx, embarrassed a few media outlets with his quick Twittering of some key figures from Telkom’s results.
Remember, Telkom’s main source of revenue is voice calls, so the fact that its phone subscriptions have dropped another 1.8 percent (now down to 4451000) means it has less subscribers than when it was first granted its five-year monopoly ending in 2002.
Telkom’s ADSL subscriber base is up 33 percent to 548015 users. In case you don’t know, the largest broadband service provider in the country is Vodacom.
So, in the age of broadband, a technology which took off at least 10 years ago in the rest of the world, the telecom with a monopoly in Africa’s most advanced financial hub has barely more than half a million subscribers.
Shame on it!
Did Telkom use last week’s announcement to make widespread changes in preparation for Seacom’s imminent switch on? Oh yes, while citizens starve for bandwidth and profit plummets, it increased ADSL bandwidth caps for the two gigabyte (GB) and 3GB offerings to 3GB and 5GB. I kid you not.
I’d love to tell you about Telkom’s plans first hand. However, when I called Telkom last week to ask about something else, I mentioned to their spokesperson that it no longer communicates with me, nor invites me to briefings, except for the occasional press release about something to do with a union dispute.
“Are you implying that because of a customer-service issue, we no longer deal with you as a journalist?” he asked, when I told him I’d been sent to Coventry since I’d complained in this column about my ADSL problems. “I’m not implying it at all,” I replied. “I’m saying it straight out.” Oh, and it has stopped advertising in my magazine too.
Our telecoms future, like it or not, is still very much in Telkom’s hands. Frankly, we’d probably be better off with Tannenbaum in charge.
The Times
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