ADSL on its last legs in South Africa

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  By   Daniel Puchert Partially state-owned telecommunications company Telkom announced in its financial results for the year ending 31 March 2025 that its ADSL subscribers had more than halved to under 30,000. According to the company’s operational data, ADSL lines decreased from 64,959 in March 2024 to 29,770. This 54.2% decline highlights that the legacy broadband technology is slowly approaching the end of the road. Telkom’s ADSL business peaked at the end of March 2016 with 1.01 million subscribers — two years after fibre upstart Vumatel  broke ground in Parkhurst . What followed was a sharp decline in Telkom ADSL subscribers. Customers connected to its copper networks decreased by more than 500,000 over the next four years. This was partly driven by Telkom itself, which began actively switching off its copper network in some neighbourhoods. If it did not have fibre in the area, it would offer a “fixed line lookalike” wireless service that ran over its cellular ...
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Ramaphosa distances himself from dozens of Zuma's key appointments

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 Mawande AmaShabalala

Political journalist
 
28 April 2021 - 19:51
ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa and Dr Tshepo Motsepe arriving at the state capture inquiry on Wednesday.
ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa and Dr Tshepo Motsepe arriving at the state capture inquiry on Wednesday.
Image: Thapelo Morebudi/The Sunday Times

As deputy president of the ANC and chair of its deployment committee, Cyril Ramaphosa knew nothing about a host of key senior public appointments made under  the Jacob Zuma administration.

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These included appointments to law-enforcement agencies, state-owned companies, boards and as executives. Ramaphosa said this to the Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture on Wednesday.

The inquiry sought to understand what role Ramaphosa, as head of deployment, played in the “patronage appointments” of characters, among others, such as Brian Molefe, Matshela Koko, Berning Ntlemeza, Tom Moyane, Dudu Myeni, Dan Mantsha, Siyabonga Gama, Arthur Fraser and Shaun Abrahams, all of whom left with a dark cloud hanging over their heads.

The commission wanted to know how the boards of Prasa, Transnet, Eskom and SAA were appointed during the Zuma years and whether Ramaphosa had a hand in them.

IN FULL | ‘I appear not to make excuses or defend the indefensible’: Ramaphosa at state capture inquiry

President Cyril Ramaphosa made his much-awaited appearance before the state capture inquiry on Wednesday.
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Ramaphosa said he knew nothing about most of the named individuals as the ANC deployment committee never processed them.

“You will find that a number of those never even featured in the deployment committee,” said Ramaphosa. “Let us accept that some of those deployments were done in a particular era, and in a particular way.

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“Right now as we look at that past slate, we are able to say we actually need to do things differently.”

Ramaphosa said it was unfortunate that most of the Zuma appointments “ended up being deployments that were not fit for purpose”.


Click here for the latest news and analysis of the state capture inquiry

“I would not be able to particularise each one of them because they happened as they did but I would say the deployment committee would not have dealt with a whole lot of those.”

Asked if he knew whether Zuma's appointments were made for dubious reasons and were  influenced by outside forces at the time, Ramaphosa said that only came to light later when the manifestation of state capture was as clear as broad daylight for all to see.

“Some of those appointments would have happened in that course of time and one, with hindsight, then became aware that there was a common thread and if you joined the dots you would find that there was something that was amiss that was happening.

“These state capture issues only became evident in time as we moved on. That is why I even referred to the statement by comrade Fikile Mbalula when he mentioned in the NEC meeting how he came to know about his appointment. Even at that time we were not alive that there was state capture ... something horribly wrong [was] going on.” 

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