{"id":16961,"date":"2010-12-01T09:50:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-01T07:50:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2013-02-06T12:33:45","modified_gmt":"2013-02-06T10:33:45","slug":"icasa-is-no-government-puppet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/broadcasting\/16961-icasa-is-no-government-puppet.html","title":{"rendered":"ICASA is no government puppet"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Chairman of the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), Stephen Mncube<\/a>, said in an interview with John Fraser on Classic FM that the authority isn’t a Ministry puppet.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just want to say unequivocally, at the age of 70, I’ve lived a very good life and I cannot afford to be a puppet of anybody\u2026when I’m living in borrowed times [sic].\u201d<\/p>\n

Mncube said that as a regulator, ICASA doesn’t care who’s in the Ministry. While it’s the Ministry’s job to make policies, ICASA will be vocal about policies it doesn’t agree with.<\/p>\n

Pressed for his opinion on South Africa’s new Minister of Communications, Roy Padayachie<\/a>, Mncube said: \u201cMinisters are always good, but to err is human.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mncube reminded the interviewer that we are living in the developing world and proceeded to provide advice that seemed to be directed at Padayachie.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you are living in a [developing] world you cannot have ideal or Utopian dreams,\u201d Mncube said. \u201cSometimes you experiment and when that does not work you must swallow your pride and revert to other strategies.\u201d<\/p>\n

When questioned about South Africa’s migration from analogue to digital broadcasting, Mncube wasn’t specific about which standard SA would adopt, presumably because the Department of Communications has yet to make a final pronouncement on the matter.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny migration from analogue to digital is bound to be good,\u201d is all Mncube said.<\/p>\n

ICASA is no government puppet<\/strong><\/a> << Comments and views<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The chairman of ICASA made it clear that the regulator would be vocal in matters where it disagreed with the Department of Communications<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-broadcasting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16961"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16961\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}