B-BBEE: PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE BRIEFED ON ICT SECTOR TRANSFORMATION WOES

B-BBEE: PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE BRIEFED ON ICT SECTOR TRANSFORMATION WOES

• 02 June 2026
• Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment
• SA Legal Academy

Ongoing challenges undermining the effective functioning of the ICT sector’s broad-based black economic empowerment (B-BBBE) charter council appear to be responsible for what is widely perceived to be an exceptionally slow pace of transformation across the industries concerned. This became apparent during a recent meeting of the National Assembly’s Communications & Digital Technologies Committee, when members were briefed by Department of Trade, Industry & Competition (DTIC) officials on the progress made to date. Poor council governance, erratic monitoring and reporting, inadequate funding and internal tensions were blamed.

There was no discussion on a 13 May 2026 media statement issued by the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) on a B-BBEE-related policy direction to the authority gazetted in December 2025 by Communications & Digital Technologies Minister Solly Malatsi. The ICASA statement pointed to the possibility of fundamental flaws in the thinking underpinning the directive, which among other things urged ICASA to ‘consider’ the alignment of its March 2021 regulations on the limitations of control and equity ownership by historically disadvantaged groups with the ICT sector’s amended B-BBEE code of good practice. In that regard, the policy direction referred to provisions in the code for equity equivalent investment programmes (EEIPs).

Only on 13 May 2026 did ICASA respond officially, as SA Legal Academy reported at the time – and another two weeks passed before the ICT sector council issued a statement commenting on the directive. In the council’s view, ‘the introduction of EEIPs as an alternative to the 30% historically disadvantaged individuals’ ownership requirement, especially when issuing new licences, may reverse the hard-fought but fragile transformation gains achieved to date in the ICT sector’. According to the statement, ‘it risks re-entrenching exclusion, allowing historically privileged entities to again dominate under the guise of investment or innovation’.

Discussions on the briefing itself tended to point to widespread frustration with the level of resistance to the ICT sector code’s ownership and control elements – not only among multinational role players but also on the part of South African companies in the ICT sector. Across the political spectrum, committee members expressed concern and dismay at the absence of substantive evidence of industry-specific commitment to meaningful, sustainable transformation. A meeting with the Minister, ICASA, the sector council and the DTIC is likely to follow.

• ICT sector council media statement
• May 2026 SA Legal Academy report on ICASA response to ministerial policy direction
• December 2025 SA Legal Academy report on ministerial policy direction

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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