As South Africans, we are by now used to seeing the country’s public infrastructure degenerate as a result of underinvestment and leadership by government.

Some obvious examples that spring to mind are Eskom, which is struggling to keep the lights on, a looming water shortage, which is receiving increasingly frequent coverage in the press, and the country’s aging road and rail infrastructure, which is in need of a serious upgrade.

It is the lack of leadership – the unwillingness to take responsibility and develop long-term plans to sustain growth and development – that ultimately manifests itself as underinvestment in key infrastructure areas. It seems that the leaders, both in government and parastatals, shy away from sweating over long-term agendas in favour of focusing on the near future, often coupled with a specific focus on self-enrichment.

Just consider the state of entities such as SAA or Telkom, for example. Neither of the two has seen stable leadership for the last decade or more, with CEOs, acting CEOs and other senior executives coming and going every few years, leaving behind nothing of value and more often than not taking multimillion-rand severance packages. Neither of the two aforementioned organisations have any institutional memory and/or long-term direction; and the cracks are beginning to show.

It goes without saying that a lack of leadership also provides a breeding ground for mismanagement and corruption, confounding the woes of some of the country’s key organisations.

The same thing happens in government, with periodic Cabinet reshuffles resulting in new ministers taking over the half-baked messes of their predecessors. As a result, little gets done and the country suffers.

Unfortunately, it seems that this lack of leadership and continuity are now threatening to undermine the country’s mobile telecoms sector, and in a big way. Government’s foot-dragging on the issue of scarce spectrum allocation is starting to have a noticeable impact on network quality, as operators are running out of spectrum, and are being forced to refarm some of their existing allotments to accommodate new technology, such as LTE.

While operators have been calling for more spectrum for several years now, government has been pondering a spectrum audit, but has not been able to move on this beyond announcing its intentions. And all the while communications ministers came and went...

In the meantime, at least one mobile operator is considering hiking prices in the next 18 months in an attempt to limit use, as network quality will become degraded. The implications of this and the adverse knock-on effect – once we start travelling down this route – are rather horrific.

Is this the best we can do as a country? Could someone please just wake up and lead?

Happy reading!

Martin Czernowalow