3 january 2002
The SACP strongly condemns the 24% Telkom tariff increases. These increases are going to be a huge blow and a burden to the ordinary working people, the poor and small businesses. Even of more serious concern to the SACP is that such an exorbitant increase will severely undermine government’s commitment to the extension of telephony and information communication services to the overwhelming majority of our people. There is absolutely no justification for such increases in a country where the majority of its people live in poverty and already cannot afford access to the existing telephone services.
The SACP is also concerned that there is no basis whatsoever for such huge increases. Instead we are strongly suspicious that these increases have got more to do with “fattening” Telkom ahead of its listing on the JSE Securities Exchange. We have consistently warned over the past year that the listing of Telkom is going to subject its services more to market rather than social and developmental considerations. These increases are a vindication of what we have always suspected. These increases are in fact tantamount to Telkom abandoning its public mandate in favour of operating just like any profit-seeking private corporation exploiting a monopoly situation.
It is this kind of private sector market logic that also leads Telkom to push local tariffs very high, whilst marginally increasing international call rates. What we find completely unacceptable in this arrangement is that it is a case of the working people and the poor of this country having to subsidise the rich, at the direct expense of local economic and social development. As the SACP we strongly believe that such a decision strengthens the hands of those who want to undermine the public sector and who argue for essential public services to be progressively handed over to the private sector, governed by the logic of private profit. These tariff increases also come at a time when there is growing evidence of a dramatic increase in telephone disconnections for the ordinary working and poor people in our country.
In the light of the above the SACP fully supports ICASA in its efforts to ensure that telephony and information communication services are accessible to ordinary South Africans. We find it difficult to understand Telkom’s gloating about its court victory against ICASA. We believe that this is insensitive in the extreme, as we believe that the court case is not between Telkom and ICASA, but essentially between Telkom and the overwhelming majority of our people, millions of whom are not going to afford these new rates.
We therefore call upon Telkom to reconsider and revise these increases as a matter of urgency. As the SACP we would have preferred that this case be settled through discussions between Telkom and ICASA, outside of the court processes. Telkom has a lot of explaining to do to the overwhelming majority of the people of our people.
Most importantly we call upon government to actively intervene in this regard, and generally to ensure that predominantly publicly-owned parastatals like Telkom stick to their public and developmental mandates. We are also seriously concerned that Telkom has a record of acting as if it is not a public entity and consistently defying government directives (as happened in the court case around retrenchments in 2000). Challenging directives by public bodies (like ICASA), that have the responsibility to look after the public interest, is indicative of such behaviour. To allow Telkom to act in this manner runs the risk of government losing total control over these public entities, thus undermining our reconstruction and development objectives.
Issued by the SACP