President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office has defended communications minister Solly Malatsi’s recent decision to direct the telecoms regulator to amend its regulations to allow international players. Business Dayreported on Friday that Malatsi announced he has directed the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) to “urgently consider alignment of the regulations in respect of the limitations of control and equity ownership by historically disadvantaged groups (HDG) and the application of the ICT sector code with the amended broad-based black economic empowerment ICT sector code”. The report stated that this decision came after Malatsi’s department in May gazetted a policy directive on the role of equity equivalent investment programmes (EEIPs) in the ICT sector “as a mechanism to accelerate broadband access”.
This will mean that players such asElon Musk’s Starlinkcan enter the South African market using a different set of empowerment rules. The decision has received widespread criticism from political parties, including the ANC, which claimed the gazette introduces policy directions that exceed the minister’s legislative authority, undermine South Africa’s transformation framework and threaten the integrity of the ICT and postal regulatory environment. The ANC said the directive mirrors a troubling trend where ministers belonging to the DA seek to bypass parliament by reforming laws through directives rather than following democratic legislative processes.
If it turns out that Icasa cannot do anything beyond what is written in law, then the process will be to look at an amendment of the legislation that is well guided in our state, in our statutes, in terms of how it needs to proceed It said no minister may amend or suspend legislation via a policy directive, adding that laws such as the Electronic Communications Act, the Postal Services Act, the Icasa Act, and the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment Act can only be changed through parliament after public participation. “Attempts to circumvent this process represent a serious overreach of executive power. Of particular concern is the gazette’s proposal to create exemptions or alternative compliance mechanisms to the 30% HDG ownership requirement,” said ANC spokespersonMahlengi Bhengu.
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The ANC seems to be at odds with the president, whose spokesperson,Vincent Magwenya, told journalists on Monday that people should not be fixated with Starlink. He said there are four or five companies which stand to benefit from the directive. “What the minister is doing is within the law.
Which, we must emphasise, within the law, is to look at what can be done to accelerate those processes. As you know, the law is clear with respect to the local ownership element for those seeking to be licensed as telecommunications network services providers, and so that’s what the minister is doing,” he said.
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