South Africa’s competition authorities need to improve the speed at which they make decisions to limit the harm that drawn-out regulatory processes have on businesses, their associated industries and consumers.
Speaking to the TechCentral Show in an exclusive podcast interview that will be published on Tuesday, Maziv CEO Dietlof Mare said the three-and-a-half years that Vodacom’s now-approved multibillion-rand deal to buy co-control of Vumatel parent Maziv spent between the Competition Commission, Competition Tribunal and competition appeal court – along with the associated legal costs – could have been better directed towards deploying fibre and getting more South Africans connected to the internet.
“Just make things faster. It’s easy to overcomplicated things, but then you sit with 31 000 pages of documents, now who is going to read that? How much is that going to cost the [merger] parties? What is it going to cost the government?” Mare asked. “I think we could have used all that money to deploy fibre faster.”
He said speed is critical in the tech sector, with South Africa’s ability to connect its citizens with fast, high-quality internet ultimately determining how economically competitive the country is globally.
This is further highlighted by the growing use of artificial intelligence, which threatens to widen the gap in productivity between those who have access to advanced technology tools and those who don’t.
AI is meaningless when basic connectivity infrastructure like fibre does not exist. According to Mare, the tendency to overcomplicate decision-making is not limited to government, as private companies are guilty of it, too.
“If there is a solution to do things faster, do it. We do it in business as well; we complicate things. You create one policy and it evolves and becomes a huge barrier in time. But you will have to go look at it again and determine what still adds value and then commit to changing it,” said Mare.
‘We have to do it fast’
The Vodacom-Maziv transaction was finally approved by the competition appeal court earlier this month after the Competition Commission recommended it be blocked and the tribunal later agreed with this position. Following the tribunal’s decision to prohibit the deal, the merger parties re-engaged with the commission to rework the terms of the deal, committing themselves to more “public interest” conditions.
This resulted in an initial spending commitment of R10-billion over five years being upped to R12-billion. According to Mare, R9-billion of this will be used to expand Maziv’s fibre footprint by a million homes. Some 350 000 of the homes passed will be in Maziv subsidiary Vumatel’s “Vuma Key” segment in densely populated and low-income areas like Alexandra in Johannesburg. Another segment of these new connections will be in Vumatel’s “Vuma Reach” areas such as Soweto and Vosloorus.
Read: Vodacom cleared to buy Maziv after three-year battle
The remaining R3-billion is earmarked for software upgrades and other investments to improve network management, fault repair and customer service.
Mare said the key to getting the deal over the line, even after three-and-a-half years, was a careful balancing of competition concerns and the public interest.
Vodacom rival MTN, for example, initially voiced its opposition to the deal, saying that a merged Vodacom-Maziv would take advantage of its combined strength in mobile and fibre to engage in anticompetitive behaviour. According to MTN, the proposed merger conditions at the time were insufficient.
Following the deal’s approval – with the revised conditions agreed to with the commission – MTN Group CEO Ralph Mupita last week voiced his support for the deal. The approval should benefit MTN should it choose by buy fibre assets in future.
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According to Mare, the approval of the deal has created scope for further market consolidation. He told the TechCentral Show that the high costs associated with the roll-out and management of fibre will lead to more mergers and acquisitions, which could result in the fibre market eventually looking similar to the mobile sector, where there are only a handful of large players.
“Quick decision-making [by regulators] is important. If we are serious about development and upliftment, we have to get technology into the communities. It’s critical, and we have to do it fast,” said Mare. – © 2025 NewsCentral Media
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