The South African Post Office is deadweight threatening to overburden an already-stretched national fiscus.

Having been in business rescue since July 2023, and now on the verge of collapse, the decision to let go of the Post Office represents an opportunity for Democratic Alliance MP and communications minister Solly Malatsi to show that his party’s leadership of the portfolio will result in different actions and outcomes from those of his ANC predecessors.

Unfortunately, it looks like South Africans are in for more of the same old bromide, albeit from a different dispensary. The communications portfolio is not in any better shape than it was one, three or five years ago.

For one thing, the SABC is still in crisis: funding for the public broadcaster remains an unresolved issue, while the SABC Bill, withdrawn from parliament by Malatsi last November, remains the subject of a fierce political battle between the minister and his ANC counterparts in government – lots of politicking is happening in the background, yet no solutions have come to the fore.

The legal battle between the SABC and Sentech over signal distribution fees is still at a stalemate while the future of Sentech in an era of digital broadcasting remains uncertain.

On the subject of digital broadcasting, the 31 March deadline for broadcasters to switch off their analogue signals is now less than a month away. In a clear case of history repeating itself, a court battle between e.tv against the communications minister is again threatening to stall the migration to digital broadcasts – a decade after the date South Africa promised the International Telecommunication Union we’d have the job done by. The same happened between e.tv (and its parent eMedia) and former minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni in 2022 – and so on and so on. Rinse and repeat: litigation has been a hallmark of the migration project.

Strain on the fiscus

Meanwhile, the State IT Agency (Sita) remains a mess, with a years-long backlog still constraining critical IT projects across different organs of state. Malatsi launched an investigation into Sita in December, and a new acting board was appointed last week. Sita has attracted sharp criticism from Malatsi’s DA and cabinet colleague, home affairs minister Leon Schreiber, who described the agency as “an artificial construct that stands squarely in the way of technological progress, not only at home affairs, but across government”.

Finally, the bankrupt Post Office is still a strain on the fiscus. Earlier this month, national treasury approved a “virement” of R150-million intended to “assist in addressing immediate financial pressures” at the company.

Chair of parliament’s portfolio on communications and digital technologies, the ANC’s Khusela Diko, described the funding as “too little to make a meaningful impact”, adding that the virement would only cover a month of the Post Office’s expenses – with an additional R3.8-billion bailout still required to save the struggling entity, according to its business rescue practitioners.

Read: Post Office gets emergency short-term bailout

So, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Yet the Post Office is Malatsi’s opportunity to do something different. Many of the Post Office’s functions are already being serviced efficiently and cheaply by the private sector. Even the monopoly over the delivery of sub-1kg parcels, recently extended by former communications minister Mondli Gungubele, has proved to be unenforceable and is widely ignored – and justifiably so.

Selling the company’s assets would contribute to the fiscus, instead of draining it via yet another bailout.

Communications minister Solly Malatsi. Image: DCDT

Malatsi’s continuation of the status quo regarding Post Office should come as no surprise given that the ANC and DA are, from a policy perspective, fairly closely aligned on the matter. Both parties are quick to admit that the entity has been a cancer on the state’s finances for over a decade, but neither is willing to amputate, perhaps fearing the political consequences of cutting the thousands of remaining jobs.

The DA’s ICT sector policy document, released just before the 2024 general election, suggests “repurposing” the Post Office for the digital age, which includes introducing a new mandate and new management to “pursue new strategies to revive the entity”. But “reviving the entity” is likely going to cost taxpayers as much as R3.8-billion, on top of the R9.4-billion that has been spent bailing it out since 2014 with nothing much to show for it.

The R3.8-billion question is where the money is going to come from.

The DA earlier this month rejected finance minister Enoch Godongwana’s proposed budget due to disagreement with the ANC over a planned two percentage point increase in the VAT rate. DA leader John Steenhuisen, in a media briefing following the cancellation of the budget speech, said his party was in full support of a budget focused on reforms that would grow the economy instead of interventions that would end up straining household budgets and dampening economic growth.

The subject of reform was one of the DA’s main talking points leading up to last year’s election and continues to be a key component of the party’s agenda. At an event marking the first 100 days of the government of national unity last October, Steenhuisen said the DA would no longer support the bailout of ailing state-owned entities.

Read: We don’t have money to save the Post Office: Malatsi

“South Africa has spent over R350-billion in bailouts for state-owned enterprises over the last 10 years. This is one of the reasons why we’re in such a difficult fiscal crisis. Money that should be available and readily available for teachers and nurses is now gone,” he said. “It has to stop somewhere and we intend that it stops now.”