Kotli Molise
RIGHT TO REPLY
There is a gross misrepresentation of facts and distortions in two of Ivor Powell’s articles about the third cellular licencing process (“Cell C scored third with Satra”, March 24 to 30, and “Satra split over Cell C decision”, March 31 to April 6).
It is not correct that the South African Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (Satra) ignored reports by consultants Afcent CLC, BDO Spencer and Satra’s specialist committees in making a decision to recommend Cell C for the licence. Council considered all information at its disposal to arrive at the decision.
There are at least seven sources of information that council consulted in making its decision. These are the feasibility studies to test the market environment that was done in 1998. The invitation to apply spelling out the five key criteria according to which applications must be evaluated and stating the weightings that each criterion must carry. The analysis reports on the strengths and merits of each application submitted to council by the two consultants engaged by Satra. Information presented by the applicants and tested in open debates among applicants at the public hearings of September and October 1999. Reports presented to council on a continual basis by staff analysis committees assigned to assist and advise council on various aspects of the process. And council’s own analysis.
The status report by the third cellular licence project director referred to in Powell’s article mentions all these sources as critical for council to arrive at a well-considered, solid and defendable decision. In other words, considered in isolation from each other none of these sources contains sufficient information. To isolate only four out of seven of them as the only relevant pieces of information is being selective on the part of Powell. This way only part of the story is presented and the truth is distorted.
Neither the staff committees of Satra nor the consultants BDO Spencer and Afcent CLC were involved in the evaluation and ranking of applications. All the evaluation and ranking were conducted by council.
The consultants analysis was based on the written applications as they were submitted by the bidders on June 14. This was prior to the public hearings. The consultants did not analyse the information obtained through the public hearings. This was done by council and staff.
At the public hearings applications were subjected to rigorous debate among the applicants and Satra posed probing questions on their oral and written presentations. Valuable information came out of the hearings and the debates, information which was not covered in the written applications but which was vital to the evaluation process. It is unrealistic to suggest that if this information was not part of the consultants analysis it must now be considered irrelevant and council must ignore it in favour of what Powell thinks the consultants recommended.
There have been many bogus documents claiming to reflect the ranking of applicants by consultants engaged by Satra. The campaign to vilify the licensing of the third cellular licensing process has been so intense and aggressive that whole websites have been dedicated to it.
In his article of March 31 Powell reported a split within Satra over the intended decision to recommend Cell C. The split was said to have happened at a meeting that had not yet even taken place. Council only met on April 1 to deliberate on the final submissions made by applicants before submitting its decision to the minister of communications. The same recklessness with facts was evident in his article of March 24 which claimed that council had taken two weeks to deliberate on the decision to recommend Cell C. The decision had been taken over three days. Powell still got the dates wrong even in his second article a week later when he said the meeting took place on February 16.
It is not true that action has not been taken about alleged links to the bidding consortia, by two Satra councillors. Parliament instituted an investigation into these allegations in November 1999, which councillors fully co-operated with. The investigation did not find anything to substantiate these allegations.
It is also not true that Peregrine consultants were disqualified for a contract with Satra because of intervention by council chair Nape Maepa. Peregrine was disqualified by the tender committee after their disclosure that its director, Krish Naidoo, was a member of a company that had shares in one of the consortia bidding for the third cellular licence. The consortium concerned is not Cell C as Powell reported.
Kotli Molise is Satra’s public affairs manager
n Ivor Powell replies: On one point I stand corrected and censured. Krish Naidoo’s connection was to Africa Speaks and not to Cell C. However, regrettable as the error was, it is not germane to the issue in context – namely the perception that impartiality could have been compromised.
I find it frankly bizarre that Molise wants to accord the same status to a feasibility study and an “invitation to apply”, (which sets out the parameters for tendering) as she does to expert reports commissioned by the Satra council at a cost of more than R3-million. Allow me here to reiterate the point, namely that these expert reports were commissioned precisely in order to guide and inform the Satra council in its adjudication, and as such, have a special (if not definitive) status.
According to Satra’s own CEO, the status of these reports is such that deviations from the findings of the outside experts would have to be strongly argued and justified by the council if powerful legal challenges were to be avoided. Such reasoned justifications have yet to be provided and the widespread public perception that something was wrong remains well justified.
While it is common cause that substantial changes were made to various licence applications after June 14, Molise is being a little disingenuous in suggesting that these changes were introduced during the public hearings. In fact, as Satra Maepa’s affidavit makes clear, notable amendments were introduced well after these hearings. The admissablity of these changes in Satra’s deliberations is at best moot.
To mention only one example, Oger Telecoms was listed as Cell C’s operating partner until much later in the year – with only a vague and conditional commitment having been secured from the American giant GTE.
When the recommendation was made, Oger Telecoms was no longer the operating partner, and instead GTE was (though the contract, incidentally, remains conditional). The legitimacy of such alterations, by the way, remains moot.
Thirdly, as regards the split in the Satra council’s review, I stand by my story – and note that two councillors this week sought legal advice as a result of their dissatisfaction with the process. Though the official, rubber-stamping meeting may have taken place only on April 1, the battle lines had already been drawn in meetings as indicated in my article.
Finally, the auditor general himself described his investigation as inconclusive due to the insufficient time and resources at his disposal. Moreover, as I note in an article this week, it contained manifest inaccuracies. To the lay person that would seem to make a nonsense of Molise’s reverence for the document.
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