Electronics Industry Federation (EIF) executive director Roger Dawes`s frustration with the pace of progress on the ICT black economic empowerment charter was apparent at an ICT sector meeting he chaired last month.
"It`s been three years and we still do not have a charter," he said. "The industry would like to know what is happening."
As the year draws to a close and promises remain unfulfilled, other industry players are also beginning to ask whether the ICT charter will ever see the light of day.
The year started with the chairman of the empowerment charter-working group, Dali Mpofu, saying the sector could look forward to a year in which the policy formation phase of the charter was finalised.
Even communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri warned that there was no room for apathy on ICT development in the region, and called on players to "rededicate" themselves to the task at hand.
Mpofu said that by 1 March this year, all issues around the ICT charter would be resolved and that the charter would be in operation by the middle of the year.
Responding to why the March deadline was not met Mpofu said there was "no crisis" with the ICT charter and there was no need to rush the job.
Later, the EIF and multinationals issued a statement saying that they were likely to adopt the Department of Trade and Industry`s (DTI`s) code, rather than the ICT empowerment charter code.
Joe Mjwara, then empowerment charter steering committee chairman, responded by saying the EIF and multinationals` position statement would not hamper the transformation process, but admitted that more amendments to the charter might be needed.
After much debate on the DTI / ICT charter code issue, the steering committee submitted the ICT empowerment charter draft to Matsepe-Casaburri and also announced that the charter code drew extensively from the DTI`s draft codes of good practice.
Belinda Mapongwana, an associate at Bowman Gilfillan attorneys, said at a conference in September that the ICT charter and the DTI`s codes were not legal documents, but once finalised they would amount to "subordinate legislation".
The DTI team assistant Zameka Stungu told ITWeb in October that the DTI`s codes had been approved by Cabinet, and added that the DTI was waiting for Cabinet to provide a date for gazetting the code for public comment and recommendations.
The empowerment charter steering committee announced that it would await the final codes before finalising the charter.
To make maters worse, the steering committee now lacks a chairman, as no replacement has been found for former chairman Joe Mjwara.
Questions are now being asked about who is ultimately responsible to ensure that the charter process is on track: the DTI, the Department of Communications, or the steering committee?
Related stories:
The long road to transformation
Crawling towards a charter
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