I have my own skewed take on the government’s policies about telecoms and see two things at work here = greed and perhaps myopia. There is a lot of money to be made through Telkom so why open everything up? It isn’t like the legal infrastructure isn’t in place already for a potent communications industry (we have constitutionally guaranteed independence of ICASA and the legal framework for not just multiple telecoms providers but also competition across industries for media services). What we lack is leadership with a real social consciousness and backbone.

The irony is that many of these jokers were educated in the former Soviet Union and have political affiliations with socialist organisations. I think their ideology shifted to selfish capitalism when they stepped into office.