Padayachie's test has come

These are testing times for newly-appointed communications minister Roy Padaychie, but at least his reputation is not tarnished by scandal and this means he has enough goodwill to obtain some breathing space.

The Cabinet reshuffle, announced by President Jacob Zuma yesterday, was a surprise in many ways.

Firstly, talk of such a reshuffle had been circulating for so long that many had almost given up any hope of it happening. Also, government has developed a reputation for not carrying out such actions. Under former President Thabo Mbeki, there was a standing joke that the only way to leave Cabinet was to die.

Secondly, while Siphiwe Nyanda's reign as communications minister can only be described as horrible, it was an open secret that he had supplied some critical resources in the form of the MK Veterans Association voting block to support Zuma in the ousting of Mbeki at the ANC's Polokwane conference in 2008.

Common wisdom had it that, while Nyanda seemed to be embarrassing Zuma (who has had to censure him twice), Zuma still had a debt to pay and so, if any action was to be taken, then Nyanda would just be shuffled over to another Cabinet position.

The final surprise is the choice of Padayachie as communications minister, and elevating a long-serving deputy minister to a full Cabinet position. Deputy ministers - because there is no actual mention of them in the Constitution - are not members of Cabinet and only serve as a type of advisor to the minister of a particular department.

And it was into that type of role that Padayachie was first appointed as deputy minister to the late Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri in 2004, after Cabinet had decided that rather than replace her, to reinforce her with him. Not that he had any experience of the ICT sector, at the time having spent time working in the non-government organisation sector, among various other activities.

However, Padayachie latched onto one issue that he could understand and that was the high cost of telecommunications in this country. I remember speaking to him after he delivered his first budget vote speech in Parliament and Padayachie expressed real concern over it.

The Cabinet reshuffle, announced by President Jacob Zuma yesterday, was a surprise in many ways.

Paul Vecchiatto, Cape Town correspondent, ITWeb

This concern he also expressed by leading and organising a Telecommunications Pricing Colloquium, in Johannesburg, in 2005. That conference directly led to the “liberalisation announcement” that Matsepe-Casaburri made in September 2007, which - although a watered down version of the Colloquium's report - did eventually have far reaching consequences, although it took legal action by Altech to bring out the full fruits.

Despite leading a successful colloquium, Padayachie was effectively sidelined by the former DOC director-general Lyndall Shope-Mafole, who appeared to have her own agenda at work. However, Padayachie cultivated a warm relationship with Matsepe-Casaburri and often stood in for her at official functions due to her failing health, or directly represented the country in official discussions as with Brazil, South Korea and Cuba.

Ironically, it is because of Padayachie's work there that Nyanda's administration could cite some successes.

But Padayachie also cracked government's whip, as it was he who upbraided national signal distributor Sentech when it first complained to Parliament that is was not getting the required funding for digital terrestrial TV migration. He made it very clear, at the time, that it was not the role of a state-owned entity to challenge government on policy.

However, Padayachie was not taken particularly seriously by the public servants in the DOC and by industry itself. Mainly this was because he played a very low-key role and remained very loyal to his immediate political principals.

“What does a deputy minister really do?” was often the comment from the public servants, while industry would often say: “Roy, well we do like to have a nice chat with him.” In other words, nice guys can't really influence much, though.

Padayachie's appointment as deputy minister for public service and administration seemed to take him out of the limelight altogether. While he retained a passion for things ICT, such as trying to rejuvenate the e-government programme, he remained somewhat frustrated, as he had no real ability to drive reform and changes in that department either.

Now Padayachie is literally in the hottest seat of the ICT sector, and what a task is set for him! It will put all his experience and his genial personality to the test. But at least no one with a tarnished reputation will be leading the DOC; and industry, at last, will have someone they can do proper business with.