Vodacom’s sale of 6.25 percent of its shares to Black investors has angered many in the telecom sector.
Vodacom hopes to take R900 million from the companies 6.25 percent worth of the company’s local operation in a broad based black economic empowerment transaction. The four main shareholders in Vodacom will be – Vodacom group (93.75%), Yebo Yethu shareholders including staff (3.44%) and two corporate partners, mainly Thebe Investments and Royal Bafokeng Holdings (1.97%).
Thami Msimango, Telkom’s chief technical officer said that licenses should be given to people who can afford to roll out infrastructure and that giving licences to one-man shows would not benefit the country. “People who can afford to roll out infrastructure should be given that spectrum,” he said.
Alan Knott-Craig, former Vodacom CEO, said that true empowerment would be achieved if everyone had affordable access to telephone and Internet services and not by favoring operators that are owned by previously disadvantaged.
However, The Chairman of the Independent Communication Authority of SA said that the telecommunication is becoming a new gold rush where large white-owned companies pocket the wealth and leave nothing for the masses.
Icasa Chairman Paris Mashile said the rungs of society would be alienated if the regulator did not actively demand a greater role for black people in the industry. This is why Icasa insist new licenses for scarce spectrum went to companies that are 27 percent black-owned.
Speaking during a conference Mashile said, demanding 51% black ownership “isn’t outside the law” and the aim was to empower black people to start their own business and not just take a stake in a successful white operator. Mashile added that white companies that sold equity to black people without relinquishing control were merely performing “empowerment gimmicks.
Telecom analyst said, “Local companies must be given equal opportunity, but they must not whine about foreign companies. They must raise their game and compete at the highest level of global standards.”
