Sad shortage of sound sense
If the president argues for the importance of telecoms, why are the ministers for that sector all out of touch?
What is it about the portfolio that communications ministers so often seem bereft of good judgment? In the ongoing Please Call me saga between Vodacom and its former employee Nkosana Makate, minister Stella Ndabeni-abrahams last month tweeted: “Just shut up, Vodacom, and do the right thing. Talk to Makate, instead of this poor PR stunt. Don’t talk to us until you have reached a settlement with him and his team.”
It is the most partisan display by a minister since then mineral resources minister Mosebenzi Zwane promoted the Guptas’ state capture interests.
Ndabeni-abrahams is responsible for a sector vital to the fourth industrial revolution, but publicly attacks a key stakeholder, which is also the largest company in SA by customers. Not only is this unbecoming of a minister, but it reveals her ignorance of a legal process mandated by the constitutional court.
After talks deadlocked, Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub offered “reasonable compensation” as instructed by the top court, reportedly R49m. A good offer, considering it wasn’t Makate but former MTN consultant Ari Kahn who invented the Please Call Me concept. Kahn has pointed out that the patent Makate presented in court was for another service and not for Call Me, which MTN was running a month before Makate claims he had the idea. You’d expect a minister to be better informed; to at least have googled some background.
She has deleted the tweet, but the ignominy lives on. Her first controversy was to interfere with the new
SABC board’s plans to retrench 25% of its 3,400 permanent staff after CEO Madoda Mxakwe said it was “technically insolvent”. By law the minister can’t interfere in the SABC’S operational management; yet she stopped the board. As a result several people on the best board the SABC has had in years resigned, plunging the bankrupt broadcaster into more chaos.
This month Ndabeni-abrahams tried to prevent the SABC from filming an Eastern Cape ANC rally where a mob burst into the Kwabhaca venue to complain about service delivery. The video of her hand literally blocking the right to information went viral. She quickly apologised and said on 702 she had thought it was an ANC camera crew — because that makes her actions more acceptable, right?
Her only sensible action so far has been to withdraw the silly Electronic Communications Amendment Bill, which tried to create a wholesale open-access network that was financially and practically unviable. It was about the dumbest idea the government has had since Zwane was appointed by former presidunce Jacob Zuma to help his Gupta benefactors steal a coal mine from Glencore.
We can only hope she’s among the dead wood President Cyril Ramaphosa jettisons after the May elections. If not, we will know that his tech-savvy state of the nation address was just words.
If Ndabeniabrahams survives a reshuffle, Ramaphosa’s backing for telecoms will seem empty