Hon colleagues, the legislation before this House today was, in the main, positively received by most of the ICT industry stakeholders who commented on the draft. This supportive frame of mind was an expression of relief that the department had seen sense and radically revised the original Bill that was published last November.
Those proposals, which were clearly drafted to emasculate Icasa's authority over regulatory development, caused uproar in the sector. The department has wisely referred most of these issues to the ICT policy review process which should produce a Green Paper for public discussion by year end. However, the desire by government to undermine Icasa's constitutional independence is not on the back burner.
The memorandum of objectives of the Bill went to great lengths to state that the amendments would not limit Icasa's independence. They said that the importance of an independent and impartial regulator for communications could be overstated. Yet, any time a clause in this Bill was criticised for giving the Minister too much authority over issues in Icasa's domain, the ANC members of the committee vociferously asserted that Icasa was not a Chapter 9 institution and that the Minister should be the person calling the shots.
Our Chapter 9 institutions, established to protect our democracy and inhibit the abuse of executive power, are increasingly being subjected to executive creep that makes them susceptible to political pressure. It is part of this government's strategy to capture institutions of state through a small ruling clique entrenching their own power and enriching themselves.
Protecting Icasa's Chapter 9 status will be the major battle in the sector during the next Parliament. Part of the ICT policy review process is to clarify Icasa's constitutional independence. This will hopefully lead to legislation that will unequivocally entrench the Chapter 9 independence of Icasa, in order to protect it from political, business and sectoral pressures, so that it can be a financially independent regulator serving the best interests of all South Africans.
The executive creep that is usurping Icasa's constitutionally protected independence can be summed up in section 4(h)(3A), which provides says that Icasa, in exercising its powers and performing its duties, must consider policy made and policy directions issued by the Minister in terms of this Act. On this fact alone we object to this Independent Communications Authority of South Africa Amendment Bill. It seeks to broaden the scope of policy directions that can be issued to Icasa by the Minister.
The DA is of the view that this clause, inserted from the Electronic Communications Act, strikes at the independence of Icasa as set out in section 192 of the Constitution. We cannot allow the erosion of the independence of our Chapter 9 institutions to happen by stealth. Thank you. [Applause.]