The minister of communications’ move to bypass BEE rules for Starlink sparks controversy, challenging South Africa’s equity policies amid misleading data and potential threats to digital sovereignty. There’s a statistic that you will read a lot as the fallout from Communications Minister Solly Malatsi’s latest directive to skirt Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) ownership policy for Starlink continues: 73% of ANC voters don’t support BEE policy, according to the Institute of Race Relations’ latest survey. To call the study flawed would be an understatement, but it is another step on the path to undermining South Africa’s equity aspirations — and it happened just before this latest bending to Elon Musk’s will.
The fact that the PR agency that invited me to SpaceX regional head Ryan Goodknight’s fireside at Africa Tech Festival sent me the policy directive an hour before the Department of Communication and Digital Technologies’ official WhatsApp speaks to the game that is afoot. The Presidency has certainly noticed the pressure. Presidential spokesperson Vincent Magwenya didn’t hold back in a statement on the weekend, accusing Musk of “deliberate dishonesty” regarding the regulatory landscape.
“He thinks he can bully us into submission… We will not be bullied!” There’s an information war raging, and it’s time to set the record straight. Let’s start with that 73% figure, because it is the foundational lie upon which this new policy house is being built.
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The Institute of Race Relations’ (IRR) head of strategic communications, Hermann Pretorius, told Daily Maverick thatits sample of 807 people is “global best practice.”But dig into the methodology, and there are cracks. Stellenbosch University political scientist and survey methodology expert Professor Collette Schulz-Herzenberg pointed out a critical failure after Daily Maverick explained the methodology of the poll: the survey only polledregisteredvoters. That immediately excludes the roughly 30% of the eligible voting-age population who aren’t on the voters roll, a demographic that is overwhelmingly young, black and economically marginalised.
If the output statistics are being used to comment on national policy, it’s a poor reflection of the nation. While 18-to-29-year-olds make up about 28% of the voting-age population, they constituted a mere 3.4% of the IRR’s sample. Schulz-Herzenberg explained that it’s difficult to claim full representation in light of that.
Then there is the neutrality of the questions. Respondents were asked to choose between “value for money” procurement or buying from black-owned companies, “even if it means paying more and getting less value”.
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