Politics.za

Sometimes I wonder why government continues to pass some laws that are just blatantly, obviously stupid. The newest stupid law to be put in place is the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-Related Information Act(RICA), which legislates that every single active cell phone SIM card must be registered, with the SIM card owner’s address details stored by the cellphone network companies. If enforced it is going to have serious consequences for millions of South Africans.

It is estimated South Africa has about 33 million cellphone users. The cell companies claim that 66% of these are prepaid customers but I wouldn’t be suprised if the number is closer to 80%.

Thanks to Telkom not covering many poor or rural areas (which by the way is in contranvention of their license terms but don’t expect it to be taken away anytime soon) cellphones are prevalent in townships and informal settlements. Large portions of South Africans (15 million according to Vodacom) have no street address (required for registration) and naturally a large chunk of these people live in these aforementioned areas. I would alo wager that close to 100% of the cellphones used in these areas are prepaid.

With the Department of Communications threatening to charge cellphone companies R100 000 a day for not being in compliance with RICA, which will be close to impossible in the one year given to do so given that close to 10 000 people need to be registere per hour, cellphone companies will have to choose between paying a minimum of R36 million in fines a year or cutting off customers or a portion of customers (perhaps those who don’t spend enough money per month making calls) who are not registered. The result of all of this is that millions of South Africans will potentially lose their only means of telecommunications, a terrible prospect for job seekers and those who work in the informal sector who depend on it.

The part which makes this worse is that the justification for RICA is to fight crime by making it easier to track down criminals. Except that because the registration process is so easy to workaround (fake ID documents, fake billing details, getting someone else to buy SIM card for you etc etc the list goes on and on) this law if enacted will bring only a handful of criminals (and the stupid ones at that who couldn’t figure out how to get around registration) to justice while the cost on millions of South Africans will be enormous.

Stop this law.