Barry Streek
The proposed merger of the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) and the South African Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (Satra) has been changed to ensure that the new body, now to be called the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa), has constitutionally entrenched independence.
The Democratic Party’s Dene Smuts said the amended Bill recognises the constitutional requirements, although the portfolio committee on communications has to do “substantial further work to fulfil the requirements of independence as described by the Constitutional Court.
“We amended the provisions for appointment and those regarding removal from office by placing those decisions where they belong, with Parliament, not the executive.
“We expressly provide that Icasa is subject only to the Constitution and the law and must be free from political and commercial interference.
“We have thrown out the Telecommunications Act section which allows regulatory decisions to stand even if improper interest is later established on the part of a councillor,” Smuts said this week.
But the Inkatha Freedom Party’s Suzanne Vos said until existing legislation on telecommunications and the IBA is changed, the minister of posts, telecommunications and broadcasting will still control policy. The substance is in the detail. Material amendments should have been made to the Telecommunications Act and the government will continue to have “an iron grip” over the issue of telecommunications licences.
The Bill is an improvement on the first draft, and “to a degree it has been improved”, but the government’s approach is delaying the development of telecommunications and thus putting South Africa behind the rest of the world, Vos said.