President of UAT Doctor Bantu Wanda Mahlatsi
By Doer Mighty Mabule
UAT Head of Communications & National Spokesperson
The United Africans Transformation (UAT) notes the outcome of today’s parliamentary committee engagement in which the Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies, Solly Malatsi, was forced to defend his draft policy proposal aimed at creating a backdoor for foreign multinationals like Elon Musk’s Starlink to circumvent South Africa’s Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) laws.
While Parliament has today sent a clear message that South Africa’s transformation framework is not to be tampered with for the sake of billionaire appeasement, we remain deeply alarmed by the intent behind this draft policy which was nothing short of a betrayal of the democratic mandate to transform the economy in favour of the historically dispossessed.
Let the record show: the Minister did not act in a vacuum.
His actions reflect the broader neoliberal posture of the so-called Government of National Unity (GNU) a regime increasingly captured by foreign interests and anti-transformation agendas.
The GNU’s silence on the matter until public pressure mounted following Ramaphosa’s recent visit to the United States and links to Trump and Musk speaks volumes about who this administration truly serves.
This attempted policy manoeuvre, dressed up as “infrastructure investment” and “equity equivalence,” was an insult to the millions of Black South Africans who still remain on the margins of the digital and economic landscape.
It was an effort to exchange ownership for access as if transformation is negotiable when a foreign billionaire is involved.
Today’s parliamentary session made it undeniably clear that there was coordinated pushback against this betrayal, not only from opposition voices but also from within the ranks of Parliament’s Communications Committee.
Honourable members questioned both the timing of the draft policy and the political motivations behind it raising valid concerns about how such a drastic policy shift conveniently followed Ramaphosa’s trip to the United States, where engagement with Donald Trump and potential deals involving Elon Musk were reportedly on the agenda. Despite Ramaphosa’s denial that Starlink came up during the visit, the sequence of events speaks for itself.
The South African public is not naïve —we see this for what it is: an attempted handover of national policy direction to foreign billionaire interests.
UAT commends those Members of Parliament who today challenged this shameless sell-out.
Their stance confirmed that South Africa is not yet fully in the hands of multinationals and that Parliament still has a role to play in defending the legacy of the liberation struggle.
However, we warn the people: this is not over.
The GNU has shown its hand.
It is prepared to deregulate empowerment and bend our national policy at the flick of a dollar — or in this case, a Musk tweet.
UAT will resist every attempt to dilute our sovereignty and economic justice under the pretext of investment or innovation.
The digital future of South Africa must belong to the people not to foreign monopolies, tech billionaires, or their local proxies.