Poison Ivy dismissal call grows louder
Duncan McLeod at the Financial Mail yesterday once more made a cogent case for firing Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri, South Africa’s misguided and downright incompetent telecommunications minister. I couldn’t agree more. In recent weeks, I’ve written here about the idiocy surrounding private undersea cables, in Brainstorm magazine about the policy to create a national mobile broadcasting monopoly, and last week suggested the Department of Communications might as well be abolished. The latter was republished on Monday on Thought Leader, the Mail & Guardian Online’s new opinion pages. I’ll be making a more elaborate case for this proposal in the October 2007 issue of Brainstorm.
Duncan tells me that the World Bank has taken an interest in the issue, and certain members of the Presidential International Advisory Council on Information Society and Development are also keeping an eye on developments. As he points out, editorials in the media, however rationally argued, have never had much influence with president Thabo Mbeki. The chances that reason will trump loyalty this time remain remote. It would be a wonderful day for South Africa’s ill-served citizens, rich and poor, if this would change. Just don’t hold your breath.
Thanks for the mention.
I think it’s worth noting that the cable policy proposals are not the creation of the minister but rather her DG, Lyndall Shope-Mafole. Of course, Matsepe-Casaburri has given her tacit support to the proposals but it’s the DG who has dreamt up this nonsense (no doubt in consultation with her husband, Henry Chasia of the Nepad e-Africa Commission).
The last thing we need is for Mbeki to fire Matsepe-Casaburri only to have Shope-Mafole take her job. They both need to go.
I agree. Shope-Mafole has been particularly incoherent on this issue. First she argues that private cables won’t bring down costs, and when a private cable operator offers a quote that proves otherwise, she says that lower prices shouldn’t come “at a cost to the South African economy”. Huh? How could it possibly cost the South African economy?
I can’t argue rationally against such illogical, inconsistent and nonsensical drivel. So yes, if only for her incoherence, she needs to go too.
Given the President’s attitude towards Manto in light of the mounting evidence against her regarding her clear ineptitude for the tasks facing her, I doubt very much that something as trivial as a telecommunications industry would persuade Mbeki to fire not just his Minister but the DG too. Mbeki’s angels are safe as long as Mbeki is around and quite possibly for some time after that. That is the problem with a government with such a strong majority - no real accountability to the collective.
The bigger problem, as I see it, is constitutional. List-based proportional representation means nobody in the national government is directly accountable to the electorate, since all owe their list position to the Party.
Exactly, Ivo!
People persist in ranting over the draconian antics of our more surreal public officials without understanding that the problem lies with the structure itself and not with the incumbents who administer it.
They have obviously bought into the urban legend of living under ‘the most progressive constitution in the world’ without having bothered to read the said document or perhaps failing to grasp the impact of its ‘provisions’.
It is a mandate to prescribe and meddle, with no activity lying outside a ubiquitous scope of ‘regulatory frameworks’, authority and intervention.
I suppose that’s the intent of a social(ist) democracy after all.