COMMUNICATIONS Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri came in for a well-deserved verbal mauling at a conference staged by MyBroadband, an online telecoms industry forum, last week.<\/p>\n
She won a prize for doing the most harm to the industry, and panellists debating industry progress tore her policies to shreds.<\/p>\n
Telecoms lawyer Dominic Cull said the communications department was incompetent, lacked leadership, had created a policy vacuum and failed utterly to take telecoms services to poor or rural areas.<\/p>\n
But the future could be just as gloomy as the past. Asked if the industry might fare better under the Zuma-induced change of political leadership, Cull replied: \u201cI don\u2019t know where you would find grounds for optimism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nobody in the political ranks really understood the telecoms sector, he said, although if the deputy minister, Roy Padayachie, took over, things might improve.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it\u2019s a political employee, to reward someone from the Zuma camp, perhaps we will go backwards,\u201d he warned. \u201cIf we get another 10 years of the Ivy factor it\u2019s going to be a disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n