Issued by: Minister of Communications
5 July 2000
Communications Minister Dr Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri has today clarified misconceptions on the process to award South Africa's third cellular licence, reiterating that she is legally obliged not to act on the final recommendations by the South African Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (Satra) before five days of her receiving them. This is in terms of the interim relief order recently granted to Nextcom by the Pretoria High Court.
The Minister has also expressed concern at media reports alleging conflict of interest by consultants used by Satra in the process. The Minister said the consulting firms have denied such conflict. It is incumbent upon those who make the allegations to produce the evidence.
"The media has also played a great role in confounding issues and confusing the public.
"In documents before me BDO expresses grave concern about how their report has been misconstrued and used for purposes not intended. They deny that they were requested to rank the applicants and state they never did so.
"The GTKF report confirms that BDO did not rank applicants and that Satra had not asked them to do so. The question is, why does the media perpetuate these untruths or half-truths."
Furthermore, the public ought to be informed of the various options open to the Minister, being inter alia:
The Minister wishes to state that she is studying the recommendations and all other documentation placed before her. She will explore the implications of each option as well as the economic and political implications of each.
In the final analysis no one will have reason to accuse her of not having applied her mind or having been biased as has been alleged in the case of Satra.