DUNCAN McLEOD: Why the communications minister needs to pick up the pace

Solly Malatsi has had a disappointing start to 2025. The communications minister — one of six DA MPs who form part of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s fractured and bloated cabinet — is not moving quickly enough to deal with the many crises facing the ICT sector.

From the funding crisis at the SABC to the failed Post Office to the continuing disaster that is digital television migration, Malatsi needs to be much bolder. He needs to do this even at the risk of inviting further political backlash from the ANC, as he did with his decision last year to withdraw the contentious and problematic SABC bill from parliament for further review.

Let’s start with the Post Office, which has been in business rescue for years and has become yet another zombie state-owned enterprise (SOE), limping along like so many other SOEs, hoping for yet another taxpayer-funded bailout to keep it fed.

It’s not Malatsi’s fault, nor the DA’s, that the Post Office has been run into the ground; the blame for that lies squarely on the ANC’s shoulders. But as communications minister, it’s his problem to fix. So far, though, there’s little sign of a real plan.

Last October, Malatsi said he had asked for the National Treasury’s support in forming a task team to “pursue private financial and operational partners” for the Post Office, which faces liquidation without a bailout — something finance minister Enoch Godongwana appears unwilling to provide, and correctly so.

Malatsi has called for a rescue plan to include “privatisation scenarios”, without providing urgently needed detail.

But even full privatisation is probably too late already; an auction of the Post Office’s assets as part of a liquidation may be the only feasible course of action now. Most functions of the Post Office are already handled ably by the private sector, including the delivery of parcels under 1kg, where the Post Office retains a delivery monopoly in name only.

Much of what the entity does — or fails to do, such as delivering mail timeously, if at all — has been replaced by more capable private sector players.

There was once an argument to be made for the Post Office reimagining itself as a low-cost partner to e-commerce companies, something akin to how the US Postal Service changed its business model, but it’s honestly too late for that. The company should be euthanised, even though that would mean further retrenchments.

Getting such a decision past the cabinet may prove impossible, and so this zombie will probably be spared for months or even years to come, at further unjustifiable cost to the already overburdened taxpayer. Malatsi would set off a political firestorm by proposing the Post Office’s liquidation, but the alternative — another bailout, another rescue plan — is a terrible idea.

Then there’s the SABC gemors. Malatsi was right to withdraw the SABC Bill last year. He probably wasn’t expecting the scale of the backlash from the ANC over that decision, which was obscene and unjustified. To his credit, he hasn’t backed down — though he has gone quiet. In the meantime, the destructive political warfare has done nothing to secure the SABC’s future.

Compounding matters for Malatsi is a recent political setback: two weeks ago, he lost a high court challenge, led by broadcaster e.tv, over his plan to switch off analogue TV broadcasts in South Africa at the end of last month.

He was slapped down by the courts for failing to consult adequately with the broadcasting industry about the switch-off and is now at risk of joining the long list of communications ministers, all of them from the ANC, who have fumbled the digital migration project over the past 15 years. It’s not a good sign.

The government’s involvement in the set-top box subsidy programme has been an unmitigated disaster, one that a long list of ANC communications ministers mishandled badly. It’s been dragging on so long now that the digital terrestrial television technology standard chosen by South Africa has become outdated.

The situation can still be rescued. But Malatsi needs to listen to industry players instead of dictating deadlines to them, a tactic also favoured by his ANC predecessors. Instead of a top-down approach (which has produced nothing but failure for a decade and a half), the industry should be allowed to manage the migration entirely by itself. The lesson here is clear: the government is the problem, and it needs to get out of the way.

If Malatsi hopes to leave a positive legacy in the communications portfolio, he needs to start making tougher calls, even if that means creating more friction in the GNU. At the end of the day, principles matter. Voters know that, too.

McLeod is editor of TechCentral