South Africa Takes Hard Line; Targets Starlink and Elon Musk

South Africa appears to have reversed its position on Elon Musk’s Starlink, targeting the company for alleged unauthorized access by users within the country, after appearing to invite Musk to invest there last week.

As Breitbart News reported in the wake of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s visit to the White House on May 20, South Africa appeared to relax its racial ownership requirements to allow Starlink to invest.

Musk had long said that he could not bring Starlink to South Africa because he is not black. Instead of 30% black ownership, South Africa’s Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies Solly Malatsi announced last Friday that the communications industry would replace black ownership with “equivalents” such as investment in local communities. That appeared to open the industry for Musk and for Starlink.

But Malatsi’s proposal, while welcomed by South African businesses and consumers, was rejected by some South African politicians, for whom so-called “Black Economic Empowerment” has become not just a sacred principle but a path to rent-seeking wealth opportunities. Notably, Malatsi is a member of the Democratic Alliance, an opposition party that has traditionally opposed the larger African National Congress (ANC).

Though the DA and the ANC now serve together in a Government of National Unity (GNU), they fight frequently over policy — and it appears Malatsi’s outreach to Starlink did not have consensus support.

That is the context in which South Africa’s communications regulator, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa), said Wednesday that it was investigating Starlink.

News24.com reported:

South Africa’s communications regulator is launching a probe into the illegal usage of Starlink in the country, and has threatened to lodge a complaint against Elon Musk’s SpaceX if it doesn’t like what it finds.
…

The statement comes a day after Communications and Digital Technology Minister Solly Malatsi addressed his department’s parliamentary portfolio committee on the proposed policy direction he issued on the recognition of equity equivalents for communications licence applicants.

The proposed policy direction may have a significant bearing on whether Starlink will meet the BEE licensing criteria needed to acquire a communications licence – a prerequisite for operating legally in South Africa.

Though Icasa’s board is nominally politically independent, it is appointed by the government, which has been dominated by the ANC since 1994. The ANC favors a racial redistribution policy known as “transformation.”

Separately, the government has proposed new minerals legislation that would expand “transformation” as well as injecting government control into more minutiae of management in South Africa’s mining sector.

Ramaphosa appeared eager to “reset” relations with the U.S., but backed the “Kill the Boer” chant earlier this week as a “liberation chant,” days after U.S. President Donald Trump criticized it in their Oval Office meeting.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.