TechCentral has reported that South Africa’s two largest political parties have
published election promises specifically pertaining to the technology, media and
telecoms (TMT) industries. The DA plans to break up the South African public
broadcaster, the SABC, into various commercial entities and sell these to the
highest bidder should it be elected to national government. Meanwhile, the ANC,
in its newly launched election manifesto, has promised to bring free Wi-Fi to
South Africa.
The DA laid out its plan in its policy document on information and
communications technology, published ahead of its manifesto launch, due to
take place in March. The ANC’s plan to expand public access to information and
communications can be found in its election manifesto, officially launched on 11
January 2014.
The DA’s document says the privatisation process should be overseen by
broadcasting regulator Icasa and the Competition Commission to ensure a
diversity of ownership and voices in South African media. Under the DA’s plan,
TechCentral reports, the Government Communication and Information System,
or GCIS, will continue to support community broadcasters by paying for a
percentage of their broadcasting time to disseminate information from
government departments while “leaving the stations free to develop their own
voice and content applicable to their audiences’.
“Public funding should be made available in each departmental budget for the
development of documentary, educational and civic information content, to be
broadcast through community and private channels, flighted in accordance with
each channel’s licensing conditions,’ the document states.
The ANC’s manifesto promises that government “will support and develop free
Wi-Fi in cities, towns and rural areas.’ It plans to invest in the rapid expansion
of broadband access across South Africa. The manifesto does not give any detail
as to how the party plans to accomplish this. It plans to provide broadband
access to all of the country’s schools by 2020 and also for 90 percent of the
population to have access to superfast broadband by the same year.
