As of this week, I will be writing a weekly column on technology and telecommunications for old friends at ITWeb — a top technology news site in South Africa with readership that slightly exceeds that of this blog, albeit by only a few orders of magnitude. The idea is to comment on issues that come up in ITWeb news stories, through my usual political or economic policy lens. It will initially be published on Thursdays. I’ll still write a separate monthly column, “Backbite & Sneerwell”, in Brainstorm magazine (link for subscribers). After all, it dates back to 2001, and is my longest-running effort at commentary. I will also continue to write columns on topics other than technology in Maverick magazine.

Last week I wrote a trial run for the new column, on the monstrously bad idea of having the state establish a local set-top box industry for digital television because “we’re loathe to rely on foreign suppliers”. This week, The Spike proper begins, with a final stab at one of cabinet’s most deserving members, Poison Ivy.

• This column was first published in ITWeb Brainstorm, a South African business technology magazine, on 1 October 2007. Do subscribe, if you prefer to read it the way it was intended to be read: in print.

In March 2003, this column was headlined Root out Poison Ivy. It wasn’t the first call for her dismissal, but it did coin the now-famous nickname for our Minister of Communications. It’s time for an escalation.

This magazine has documented every step in the failed politics of telecommunications reform in South Africa. Now the entire sorry saga is retold in a paper co-authored by Willie Currie of the Association for Progressive Communications and Robert B. Horwitz of the Department of Communication at the University of California in San Diego.

The ten-year retrospective makes for sobering and intensely depressing reading. The authors interviewed everybody who was anybody during this time. In its 44 pages are collected, with academic rigour, failure upon failure, which makes the most cogent case yet for the dismissal of the current Minister of Communications, Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri.

Moreover, I contend that it justifies the abolition of the ministry itself.

The headline of the report, “Another instance where privatisation trumped liberalisation,” perceptively highlights the core philosophical error underlying the policy of “managed liberalisation” that South Africa followed since Telkom was first granted its monopoly in 1997.

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In this country, the notion of private companies risking their capital on infrastructure projects is a no-no. While it complains about “market failure” and high prices, Duncan McLeod reports that the government has just decided to spend $2 billion (!) on its own undersea cable project. It’s no surprise that foreign investors are being chased away. It’s no surprise the World Bank is perplexed.

Clearly, our government’s idea of a New Partnership for Africa’s Development is central control over all major projects. It is to crush private competition, and stubbornly forge ahead with state-led development. We don’t need neo-colonialist exploiters, we’ll lay our own damn cables, is what Poison Ivy, the communications minister, appears to be saying.

There’s a wealth of evidence that Keynesian or socialist state-led development has failed for decades to lift poor countries out of poverty. Those countries in which significant economic development occurred achieved this by encouraging private investment and free markets.

In addition to the statistical evidence, the theoretical problem is that state competition scares off private investors, without which there will be no competition, whether on service quality or price. The state can only solve problems in series, trying one possible solution after another. When it does appear to solve it, there is no way of knowing if it did stumble on the best solution, whether supply actually meets demand, or whether the price is right. Besides, to date the government’s record at telecoms development has been atrocious.

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Dene Smuts, the official opposition party’s spokesperson on communications, sure knows how to get quoted. Witness:

[Minister of Communications Ivy] Matsepe-Casaburri is simply not implementing recommendations. She seems to act as a law unto herself and an unguided missile. I intend to ask the committee to attend to this. The department is expected to appear before us this month and I intend to use this as an opportunity to tackle the matter and take it forward.

This was in response to the minister’s reported statement that said a Public Service Commission report which found “sufficient evidence” of several irregularities in the appointment of staff in her department was “incorrect”, and that she would take no action on its recommendations. This report lends support to recent allegations about fraud and corruption in the hiring practices of the Department of Communications (DOC).

The most elegant solution to these problems would be to fire the minister — you could pick from a smorgasbord of reasons — and merge her portfolio with that of the Department of Trade and Industry. Then require all current employees of the DOC to re-apply for positions in the new department. Two birds, one stone.

• This column was first published in Brainstorm magazine, South Africa, on 1 September 2007. They keep me in bread, beer and bacon, so I’d appreciate it if you’d consider subscribing.

There are finally signs that the long-frozen telecoms sector is thawing. Now everyone’s thanking the government. That’s twisted.

A celebratory message arrived recently: one side of a particular road was being trenched by Neotel, while the other was being dug up by MTN. Great news indeed, if only because it proves that the space-time continuum doesn’t implode when two competitors dig up the same road.

Similar good-news stories appeared elsewhere. A company named Seacom is building a new undersea cable. Vodacom says it wants a meerkat in every telecoms hole it can find. Every second VANS operator is swindling reporters into believing it’s a historic first, the next-big-thing in infrastructure. Talk of new interconnect regulations, industry consolidation, self-provision and new pay TV licences spices up dinner parties, and pundits get drunk on the heady mead of price wars and dark fibre.

The cause is the new Electronic Communications Act, which though still a vague piece of legislation is making it possible for some enterprising companies to squeeze through some gaps. So we find ourselves celebrating – finally – the culmination of “managed liberalisation”.

But why? There’s something deeply pathological in our reaction.

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Given the disaster that is South Africa’s telecommunications policy, what do you think companies in the sector would do? Blame the minister for not acting in the interest of South Africa’s citizens? Complain that her policies have cost the business sector billions over the years?

No way. They’re sucking up to her by funding expensive parties to “celebrate” a formality that is an ordinary part of her job description. In response to a question in parliament, minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri reportedly said:

Yes, a function was organised to mark the occasion of the delivery of my vote in the National Assembly. The function was fully sponsored by companies within the ICT sector.

The cost of the party? R400 000, two thirds of which paid for the entertainment. The shameless companies involved? Dimension Data, Vodacom, Cell C, MTN, GijimaAST, ForgeAhead, Microsoft, Business Connexion, Neotel, Multichoice and Nokia Siemens Networks.

Does this show that the incumbent profiteer, Telkom, is less craven and opportunistic than this lot, or that Telkom already has the minister in its pocket?

Frankly, I’m disgusted with the lot of them.