The South African Put up Workplace is deadweight threating to overburden an already-stretched nationwide fiscus.
Having been in enterprise rescue since July 2023, and now on the snapping point, the choice to let go of the Put up Workplace represents a chance for Democratic Alliance MP and communications minister Solly Malatsi to indicate that his social gathering’s management of the portfolio will lead to totally different actions and outcomes from these of his ANC predecessors.
Sadly, it appears to be like like South Africans are in for extra of the identical previous bromide, albeit from a special dispensary. The communications portfolio is just not in any higher form than it was one, three or 5 years in the past.
For one factor, the SABC continues to be in disaster: funding for the general public broadcaster stays an unresolved problem, whereas the SABC Invoice, withdrawn from parliament by Malatsi final November, stays the topic of a fierce political battle between the minister and his ANC counterparts in authorities – plenty of politicking is occurring within the background, but no options have come to the fore.
The authorized battle between the SABC and Sentech over sign distribution charges continues to be at a stalemate whereas the way forward for Sentech in an period of digital broadcasting stays unsure.
With regards to digital broadcasting, the 31 March deadline for broadcasters to change off their analogue indicators is now lower than a month away. In a transparent case of historical past repeating itself, a courtroom battle between e.television towards the communications minister is once more threatening to stall the migration to digital broadcasts – a decade after the date South Africa promised the Worldwide Telecommunication Union we’d have the job carried out by. The identical occurred between e.television (and its dad or mum eMedia) and former minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni in 2022 – and so forth and so forth. Rinse and repeat: litigation has been a trademark of the migration undertaking.
Pressure on the fiscus
In the meantime, the State IT Company (Sita) stays a large number, with a years-long backlog nonetheless constraining essential IT initiatives throughout totally different organs of state. Malatsi launched an investigation into Sita in December, and a brand new appearing board was appointed final week. Sita has attracted sharp criticism from Malatsi’s DA and cupboard colleague, residence affairs minister Leon Schreiber, who described the company as “a man-made assemble that stands squarely in the best way of technological progress, not solely at residence affairs, however throughout authorities”.
Lastly, the bankrupt Put up Workplace continues to be a pressure on the fiscus. Earlier this month, nationwide treasury authorised a “virement” of R150-million supposed to “help in addressing quick monetary pressures” on the firm.
Chair of parliament’s portfolio on communications and digital applied sciences, the ANC’s Khusela Diko, described the funding as “too little to make a significant affect”, including that the virement would solely cowl a month of the Put up Workplace’s bills – with a further R3.8-billion bailout nonetheless required to save lots of the struggling entity, in accordance with its enterprise rescue practitioners.
Learn: Put up Workplace will get emergency short-term bailout
So, the extra issues change, the extra they keep the identical. But the Put up workplace is Malatsi’s alternative to do one thing totally different. Most of the Put up Workplace’s features are already being serviced effectively and cheaply by the personal sector. Even the monopoly over the supply of sub-1kg parcels, just lately prolonged by former communications minister Mondli Gungubele, has proved to be unenforceable and is broadly ignored – and justifiably so.
Promoting the corporate’s property would contribute to the fiscus, as an alternative of draining it by way of one more bailout.
Malatsi’s continuation of the established order concerning Put up Workplace ought to come as no shock on condition that the ANC and DA are, from a coverage perspective, pretty intently aligned on the matter. Each events are fast to confess that the entity has been a most cancers on the state’s funds for over a decade, however neither is keen to amputate, maybe fearing the political penalties of chopping the 1000’s of remaining jobs.
The DA’s ICT sector coverage doc, launched simply earlier than the 2024 common election, suggests “repurposing” the Put up Workplace for the digital age, which incorporates introducing a brand new mandate and new administration to “pursue new methods to revive the entity”. However “reviving the entity” is probably going going to price taxpayers as a lot as R3.8-billion, on prime of the R9.4-billion that has been spent bailing it out since 2014 with nothing a lot to indicate for it.
The R3.8-billion query is the place the cash goes to return from.
The DA earlier this month rejected finance minister Enoch Godongwana’s proposed price range as a result of disagreement with the ANC over a deliberate two proportion level enhance within the VAT fee. DA chief John Steenhuisen, in a media briefing following the cancellation of the price range speech, mentioned his social gathering was in full assist of a price range centered on reforms that might develop the financial system as an alternative of interventions that might find yourself straining family budgets and dampening financial progress.
The topic of reform was one of many DA’s primary speaking factors main as much as final yr’s election and continues to a key part of the social gathering’s agenda. At an occasion marking the primary 100 days of the federal government of nationwide unity final October, Steenhuisen mentioned the DA would not assist the bailout of ailing state-owned entities.
Learn: We don’t have cash to save lots of the Put up Workplace: Malatsi
“South Africa has spent over R350-billion in bailouts for state-owned enterprises over the past 10 years. This is likely one of the the reason why we’re in such a troublesome fiscal disaster. Cash that needs to be out there and available for lecturers and nurses is now gone,” he mentioned. “It has to cease someplace and we intend that it stops now.”
So, why not draw a line within the sand on the Put up Workplace? — © 2025 NewsCentral Media
- Nkosinathi Ndlovu is a senior journalist at TechCentral
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