SOUTH AFRICA

STATEMENT BY H.e. DR IVY MATSEPE-CASABURRI
MINISTER OF COMMUNICATIONS

Chairperson
Honorable Ministers and Heads of Delegation,
Excellencies,
Dear Delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen

On behalf of the Republic of South Africa, I would like to congratulate you for your election as the Chairperson of this important Conference and express our delegation’s confidence in your leadership in that regard.

We look forward to working with you and hope that this conference will be one of the historic milestones of our sector.

Chairperson,
Following your hosting of the World Radiocommunications Conference and the World Telecommunications Development Conference in Istanbul, we have become accustomed to the warm hospitality that is characteristic of the Turkish people. We thank you.

As we bid farewell to Mr Yoshio Utsumi in his capacity as Secretary General of our Union, we take this opportunity to express our appreciation for his committed and enthusiastic service. We wish him well in his future endeavours. Equally, we express our appreciation to the other elected officials. Our special appreciation also goes to the personnel and management of the ITU for their professional service. Our country remains committed to supporting the creation of a conducive working environment.

Chairperson, since we last met in Marrakesh there have been important developments in our sector as a result of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).

I would like to recall that it was because of the ITU that we had the Summit which gave the formal recognition to Information and Communication Technologies as important tools for socio-economic development. It was also because of the ITU’s experience of working with its Sector Members that the Summit was envisioned, and successfully organized, as a multi-stakeholder event.

Both these developments were historic.

Chairperson, our sense of commitment to gender equality makes us duty-bound to congratulate countries for the larger numbers of women who are also at high levels of representation at this conference.

This again is noteworthy since it represents another historic milestone for this organization .

Chairperson,
Since we last focused on the question of Internet governance in Tunis there have been developments that require our urgent attention.

Recognising that these developments can not all be resolved at this Conference, we will at this time limit ourselves to recalling and re-iterating the words of President Mbeki when he addressed the Summit in Tunis, on behalf of the South African government and
said…“we welcome and fully support the agreed position that Internet governance is an essential part of a “people-centred, inclusive, development oriented and non-discriminatory Information Society,”….He went on to say …“we commit ourselves to the stability and security of the Internet as a global facility and to ensuring the requisite legitimacy of its governance, based on the full participation of all stakeholders”.

We only have two more Plenipotentiary Conferences before we reach the 2015, the year we set ourselves to reach our Millennium Development Goals targets. The ITU has to be one of the institutions in the forefront of meeting these targets.
This Conference therefore has the responsibility to empower the ITU to play this role. It is in this light that we look at the proposals on the mandate of the ITU.

When we next meet in ordinary session of the Plenipotentiary Conference in 2010, it will be the year that our country will be hosting the FIFA World Cup for the first time in history on African soil.

Chairperson, as many would know, this is the largest sports event on earth. I would like to add that more significantly; it is probably the largest event on earth whose success relies significantly on telecommunications and broadcasting infrastructure, and therefore the importance of the ITU.

In this regard, and in line with the developments in the ITU Radiocommunications sector, our country has started implementing its migration from analogue to digital Television broadcasting.

Moving to digital broadcasting will of course bring better quality viewing, but for us, what is more important is that we will have more frequencies freed up for additional broadcasting channels enabling us to have dedicated channels to meet our education, health, language and other challenges. We will, as a result, also be able to provide additional ICT services for our developmental goals.

In addition to the modern and reliable telecommunications requirements of the FIFA World Cup, we are proud to announce that South Africa is with Australia, one of the remaining of two countries that have been short-listed to host the Square Kilometre Array or SKA.

This is project, which is in excess of a billion Euros, consists of thousands of dishes inter-connected through thousands of computers. It will be the foremost instrument in astronomy and fundamental physics.

The proposed site for this project is in the Northern Cape Province, a place that is mainly desert. This project, to which the country has already allocated resources, is expected to contribute not only to global scientific work but also to our commitment to reduce poverty and un-employment.

The SKA requires bandwidth in the region of terabits per second. We have already started with the broadband infrastructure required for this and other scientific projects that we are involved in.

I am happy to inform you that, in collaboration with eight other countries in East and Southern Africa, we are signatories to the Protocol for the Policy and Regulatory Framework for the NEPAD ICT Broadband Infrastructure Network. The development of this network, the first of its kind, is based on open and non-discriminatory access as well as the NEPAD principles of being predominantly African owned and lead.

We take this opportunity to recognize the personal leadership of President Paul Kagame of Rwanda and thank him for hosting the Headquarters of this important network.

We are also part of the fifteen African countries that are implementing the NEPAD e-schools Demo project, another world first. The objective of this project is to ensure that all 600 000 African schools produce young people who can not only function in the Knowledge Economy but also contribute to building an inclusive Information Society.

I wish to take this opportunity to thank the ITU for its support to our country as well as the for the NEPAD ICT programme.

In July this year our Electronic Communications Act ( also known as the Convergence Act) came into effect, thus opening a new era in the history of telecommunications in our country. Our new Act provides for the convergence of previously separate and distinct services. We have no doubt that it will afford our citizens with more services thus contributing to the reduction of the cost of communications.

We have been honoured to serve on the ITU Council since being a democratic country. We have given our best in the service of the Union in as objective a manner as our developing-country status allows. We are grateful for the confidence that we have been given to serve and avail ourselves for re-election to the Council one more time for which we ask for your support.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Soweto youth uprising, an event that contributed immensely to our struggle for democracy.

Ours is a young country. A country that takes great pride in the contribution of its youth to the struggle against Apartheid. A country that therefore recognizes the important role that youth can play in the development of the Information Society.

It is for this reason that we are proud to be the co-initiators of the now well developed ITU Youth Forum which first met in our country. We think that the time has come for the ITU to find a mechanism for escalating the involvement of youth in its formal work and look forward to exchanging views with others on this matter.

We hope to see many of you in South Africa in 2010, but if you can not be there physically, we guarantee that because of the professional work that our own people in collaboration with the professional staff of the ITU, the world will be able to see the games clearly and in all of our African colours.

Thank you Chairperson. Thank you all for your kind attention.