SA Goverment Struggles with Private Investment, like SEACOM

Johannesburg

THE government's attitude to private sector investment in infrastructure is becoming ever more bizarre.

It complains that the private sector is not coming to the infrastructure party. But as soon as private sector operators show their willingness to invest billions of rands in any kind of network infrastructure that SA desperately needs, the government hastens to put obstacles in place that seem aimed at driving private sector investors away. Even more bizarre is that if the private sector comes along with huge sums to invest, in a new fuel pipeline or an undersea telecommunications cable, the government says, in effect: "No, don't you do that, we want it for ourselves." After all, why should local and international financiers pay when SA's taxpayers can be hit for the money instead?

The tangled undersea cable story is the latest instance of this peculiar approach to the world. There can be no question that SA and Africa desperately need more bandwidth to connect to the outside world, or that it needs to be a lot cheaper than what we have now if telecommunications costs in this country are to come down to anything close to an international norm.

And it is urgent: not only is the dearth of international bandwidth holding back the development of industries such as the call-centre industry, but there's also the 2010 Soccer World Cup to contend with, not to mention the prospect that SA may win the tender for the bandwidth-hungry international telescope, SKA ( square kilometre array).

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