First published in the Daily Maverick 168 weekly newspaper.

Just when it seemed South Africa would finally get new spectrum licensed for the first time in 15 years at a month-end auction, a legal spanner has brought it to a halt.

As I’ve tried to explain before, the issues are as clear as mud. Telkom, the third-largest operator, complained that the auction rules would favour the two biggest players, Vodacom and MTN, so it sued the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) last year.

Earlier this year, MTN also sued the regulator, concerned that the auction would deny it access to the crucial 3.5GHz range – some of which Telkom already has access to.

On Monday, Telkom convinced North Gauteng High Court judge Selby Baqwa to halt Icasa’s long-awaited auction, which had been set for 25 March. Telkom was joined by broadcaster e.tv in winning the interdict – for different concerns about the same spectrum.

Currently, the 700MHz and 800MHz ranges are used by good old-fashioned tele-vision signals – which people can still pick up with bunny ears. Those extremely useful bands are known as the “digital dividend” for their enormous value to the cellular industry and their ability to provide us all with lovely, fast wireless broadband.

The global deadline for moving the older television technology off these frequencies – to another broadcast technology known as digital terrestrial television (DTT) – was June 2015. South Africa is a little behind.

Telkom is upset that Icasa will charge the successful bidder for these frequencies even if they are still being used by TV.

Broadcaster e.tv is equally worried, its lawyer told eNCA news, because it still uses these frequencies for its free-to-air channel e.tv. It doesn’t want signal interference. (Disclosure: I host a TV show on eNCA called TechMatters.)

Unfortunately for Icasa, as the courts found this week, it would be a bridge too far if both the successful bidder and the broadcaster were forced to use this redundant analogue broadcast technology. This is all caused by our government being five years late on an important global deadline.

So why hasn’t South Africa moved our historic television signals off these golden bands of radio frequency so that they can be used to speed up our mobile internet connections and potentially uplift all of our economic activity? The short answer is corruption. The long answer is the ANC is so bereft of economic logic and understanding of how a modern economy operates that it has failed for 26 years to take advantage of the internet and mobile boom.

The ruling party has consistently deployed the least-suited cadre to the role, from the ignorant Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri (who criminally protected the then monopolist Telkom’s interests over the rest of the country) to the incompetent and corrupt: Dina Pule was fired eventually, as were Faith Muthambi and Bheki Cele, after Jacob Zuma had split the communications ministry into two to find jobs for pals who supported his State Capture project.

Amazingly, Muthambi remains a free person and chairs a parliamentary committee despite evidence at the Zondo Commission revealing her treasonous leaking of Cabinet minutes to the Guptas in 2014.

Yes, Zuma’s benefactors wanted the contract for the required set-top boxes, which are needed for older television sets to receive the DTT signal. During her time as minister, Muthambi went against ANC policy to get these devices made and stalled the whole process. She broke the law – the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse laid treason and corruption charges in 2017 – yet she still not only serves as an MP but also chairs Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Communications.

That’s why SA won’t have nice new fast 5G for our new 5G smartphones – not because two business interests took their grievances to court. It’s because the ANC still thinks the future is in owning a mine. It can’t see how the world has changed. The new gold is now in software, mobile, e-commerce, big data, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, smartphone apps and the internet.

In the same way, the ruling party and its vested interests can’t see that solar is the future because they are invested in coal mines. Hence our country can’t move forwards because it has neglected this critical sector. And it continues to dump politically connected but incompetent ministers in what should be a prestige portfolio.

Is the current communications minister, Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, up to the job of leading our country into the Fourth Industrial Revolution? After all, she is the co-chair of Ramaphosa’s presidential council on this.

Ndabeni-Abrahams – whose minor faux pas include not knowing Zürich is in Switzerland and having her WhatsApp account hacked – runs a department that truly, really, madly, deeply believes laptops and tablets should be reclassified as televisions so that the hopelessly bankrupt SABC can be bailed out by a direct tax on us instead of an indirect government bailout. The only good news is her department changed its mind about including smartphones in its new-fangled reality-defying definition.

No wonder we haven’t had a spectrum auction since 3G was rolled out 15 years ago. DM168

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper which is available for free to Pick n Pay Smart Shoppers at these Pick n Pay stores.