President Cyril Ramaphosa has signed performance agreements with all of his cabinet ministers, detailing the targets they will need to meet.
“These contracts aim to strengthen the capacity of the state and increase accountability, the presidency said in a statement on Tuesday 8 December.
“These agreements – which are based on the targets contained in the Medium-Term Strategic Framework – will be made public so that the people of South Africa can hold those who they elected into office to account.”
Communications Minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams has been assigned the responsibility of ensuring that ICASA is adequately resourced to licence 4G spectrum.
She has also been tasked with issuing a policy direction for 5G by December 2021 and ensuring that 80% of the population have access to the Internet by 2024.
Cutting data prices in half
Ramaphosa also said that Ndabeni-Abrahams must ensure that the current cost of mobile data is cut by 50%.
She must ensure that South Africa is in the top 10 in Africa for the price of 1GB data pricing by 2024 and that the Electronic Communications Act is amended to address competition issues.
Another of Ndabeni-Abrahams’ responsibilities will be to revise the current pricing methodology in the legislation to include direct price regulation of retail prices.
Irregular expenditure must also be reduced by 100% by 2024 and consequences for corruption and misconduct must be enforced.
The agreement between Ndabeni-Abrahams and President Ramaphosa was signed on 23 October 2020 and has now been made public.
In the agreement, it is noted that this is a legal and binding performance agreement that will be used for assessment purposes.
In instances where performance is sub-optimal, the president will “meet with the minister to discuss areas of improvement”. These will be incorporated on the scorecard for the next performance review.
The president may take “any action he deems necessary” in cases of persistent non-performance.
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