Craving connection

In December each year, I take the Dagada tribe (my wife and four children) to my mother's home village, Guyuni, (formerly Venda), in Limpopo. Fortunately for the residents of this rural village, the African National Congress quickly deployed an electricity infrastructure just before the 2011 Local Government Elections. It doesn't, however, appear that government will even bother to roll-out a fixed-line telecommunications infrastructure before the 2014 General Elections.

There's a semblance of mobile connectivity in this village, but it's not reliable, and each time I (or a member of the Dagada tribe) need an Internet connection or want to make a mobile banking transaction, I have to drive for about 30 kilometres. As a member of the upper-middle class, I am able to undertake a 60km trip to access the Internet, but unfortunately my mother and the majority of her fellow residents don't have this as an option. Even in rare moments, where residents occasionally secure a mobile connection and access telecommunications services, the costs of such services are ridiculously high.

Most people in this rural village spend a huge chunk of their money, largely obtained from social grants, on paying for ICT services. While my family and I were in Guyuni Village this December, ANC leaders were in Mangaung discussing well thought-out and carefully crafted policies. Was I impressed with their ICT policies? The answer is an emphatic 'no'. The problem with the South African government is not a lack of ideas or well researched plans; the problem is with implementation.

Some of the best pieces of legislation promulgated in South Africa include the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, and the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, 2002 (ECT Act). Certain provisions of the best crafted e-commerce law in the world, the ECT Act, haven't been implemented almost 10 years after it was passed. This includes the novel provision of the government appointing cyber cops. SA's ICT policy trajectory has suffered from gross inconsistencies.

SA's ICT policy trajectory has suffered from gross inconsistencies.

The Department of Communications, which is responsible for ICT policy formulation, has been on the receiving end of Zuma's endless cabinet reshuffles. The Sunday Independent editor, Moshoeshe Monare, wrote: "A fourth cabinet reorganisation in less than four years is undesirable, disruptive and will affect governance. We have had more than one communications minister (five, including two acting) every year since 2009."

This policy flip-flopping and the ineffectiveness of the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) has left the consumers and organisations vulnerable to intolerably high telecommunications costs, and the needy people are the ones that have to bear the brunt of poor policy implementation.

You would think the government will deal with this matter speedily, since the majority of the needy people in rural and underserved areas are traditional voters of the ANC. But as long as the needy people continue to give ANC blind loyalty, the government impunity and poor service delivery will continue unabated. Ironically, it is the very needy people who will continue to bear the brunt of poor and expensive ICT services.

Even for people who, for the rest of the year, live in cities and leafy suburbs, the quality of ICT services remains highly unsatisfactory. Excessive ICT-related services costs in SA are against general principles of universal service and access: firstly, availability - national coverage of ICT services; secondly, accessibility - users treated alike, non-discrimination in relation to price, service quality irrespective of location, and race; and thirdly, affordability - voice and data services should be priced so that most users can afford them. The fact that technology is still seen as status symbol in SA is an indication that access to quality ICT services is still a privilege of the few.

While my son and his peers in Johannesburg's northern suburbs have access to ADSL and wireless routers, their counterparts in Guyuni Village don't even know what a desktop and 3G cards look like. Whereas grade 6 learners at Crawford College are replacing textbooks with iPads, learners in Limpopo are yearning for textbooks. If there is any genuine accessibility to ICT-related services by needy people, then this will be achieved through competitive market forces and not through the government's flip-flopping telecommunications policies.