Someone tell Stella what it’s all about
Despite the ministry’s incompetence, an opposition MP has brought the social media giant before parliament
What a different world we would live in if the DA’s Phumzile van Damme were the communications minister instead of the inept Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams.
Last week the minister briefed parliament on the train wreck that is the SABC, whose retrenchment process and attempts to cut its R3bn staff bill she has twice interfered with.
It was a minor step up from her department’s usual briefings: a realitytwisting attempt to prop up the bankrupt public broadcaster by reclassifying laptops and tablets as televisions so their owners can pay licence fees, which only a third of the 9-million TV licence holders do.
Meanwhile, Van Damme, the opposition’s best voice on telecoms and internet issues, was making good on her promise to “summon” Facebook to account before parliament for “harmful misinformation”.
Facebook, whose Africa head office is in Joburg, has a date with parliament’s communications and digital technologies committee on May 25.
“Facebook’s agreement to the meeting is historic and a source of pride for SA as a first in Africa, and one of a few countries in the world to successfully secure a meeting with Facebook,” Van Damme says.
She wants to know “what steps the tech giant will be taking in tackling harmful misinformation, particularly as we inch towards the 2021 local government elections” on October 27. “Facebook often tailors plans for countries ahead of elections to guard against misinformation. We would like to see the same done for SA.”
Ndabeni-Abrahams was having to defend the mess that is the SA Post Office since Mark Barnes volunteered to right that sinking ship. He almost did, until the government reneged on its agreement to let Barnes manage Postbank instead of hiving it off. After Barnes resigned, the post office has returned to its former moribund state.
Meanwhile, Van Damme is engaging with a very real problem and not fixing one Ndabeni-Abrahams created by assuming a politician can run a business better than a businessperson. She wants to “ensure that the interests of the people of SA are protected” and their constitutional right to freedom of speech is upheld.
And she has an eye on the future. The Facebook hearing will also focus on “the beginning of discussions regarding the social media platform paying SA media houses for carrying their content, as was recently successfully implemented in Australia”.
Imagine that. A politician engaging with real problems in the real world, instead of reclassifying computers as TVs, or interfering in the SABC and post office to the detriment of both and the country in general.
As Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in 2016 on a surprise trip to Lagos and Nairobi: “The thing that is striking [about Africa] is the entrepreneurial energy. This is where the future is going to be built”.
Someone please tell Stella.
‘Facebook’s agreement to the meeting is historic and a source of pride for SA as a first in Africa’