So much for pit latrines being an urgent necessity to get rid of. The government’s latest pie-in-the-sky idea is to give every household 10 gigabytes (GB) of free data every month.
Don’t worry about consistent electricity supply or water and sanitation – the ANC has found a new unfulfillable promise to make to the electorate in the hope so staving off its inevitable decline in the 2024 elections.
On the plus side, it is a more appropriate strategy for Communications and Digital Technologies minister, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, whose only focus appears to have been doing what the country agreed to have completed by 2015: freeing up the so-called digital dividend. This set of frequencies is still being used by the free-to-air TV stations, and there is already mounting evidence that failing to adequately prepare for this in previous years will see the poorest of the rural poor left without television signals at all. But that is another monumental government failure for another column.
Admittedly, Ntshavheni is coming off a low base after her predecessor Stella Ndebeni-Abrahams spent her three years in the portfolio trying to bend the laws of physics to redefine smartphones as televisions to rescue the SABC – despite interfering in its running and retrenchments at every opportunity.
Now Ntshavheni wants the government to give every household 10GB a month.
Without immediately bursting out laughing at the absurdity of what this ginormous task entails, let’s stop for a moment and ask a key question: who is going to pay for all of this? And where in the depleted, state-captured, Eskom-hobbled South African economy money will be found? The Basic Income Grant is already scaring economists at the hole it will make in the country’s non-existent financial reserves.
“Data has become a new utility like water and electricity that our home needs,” Ntshavheni said during the debate about President Cyril Ramaphosa’s state of the nation address.
“At some point, South Africa will say that each month every household, whether rich or poor, whether employed or unemployed, will have access to 10GB of data per month without failure,” she added.
That’s the phrase I laughed at, “without failure”.
The ruling party still can’t get water to communities in desperate need, can’t keep the lights on (literally) and an education NGO has to go to court to force the government to get rid of pit latrines. When the ANC government can provide all the other essential services – which are already classified as a human right and it is constitutionally required to deliver; including water, electricity, sanitation, and not being mugged or raped on your way home from work – then Ntshavheni might have a point.
But more worrying, as I pointed out last week, Ntshavheni has been heavily implicated in State Capture in the second part of acting chief justice Raymond Zondo’s report for her board role in the destruction of armaments firm, Denel. From a world-class going-concern, Denel is now another wreck of a state-owned enterprise unable to pay salaries.
Ntshavheni oversaw the wholesale destruction of this (admittedly) Apartheid dinosaur, helping the Guptas destroy another part of SA’s economy.
Now, tenderpreneurs must be rubbing their rent-seeking hands with glee. If you thought R14bn in looted PPE funds in 2020 was a gigantic figure, wait until they get their sticky little fingers into the contracts to supply 10GB to every household, every month.
With Ntshavheni in charge, what could go wrong?
- This article first appeared in the Financial Mail.