Telkom were "above the law"

Bretton Vine recently posted an article from Business Report by Ann Crotty on IOZ.legal. 

Willie Currie, a former counsellor of the Independent Communications Authority of SA; and Robert Horwitz, a member of the department of communication at the University of California in San Diego have authored an article entitled "Another instance where privatisation trumped liberalisation: the politics of telecommunications reform in South Africa - a ten year perspective".

In it, they claim that the shareholders' agreement signed by the government when it sold a 30 percent stake in Telkom to the Thintana Communications consortium placed both companies above South Africa's laws.  It also outlines how Southern Bell Company (SBC) played a significant role in slowing down the process of deregulation in order to extend Telkom's monopoly and their opportunity to milk the SA consumer to the profit of SBC.

I was working for the dark side at the time and recall finding the SBC guys who were brought in at exec level to be a generally arrogant and aggressive bunch.

We were ripped off.  By our own people too.  Makes my blood boil.

Update:

The academic paper "Another instance where privatisation trumped liberalisation: the politics of telecommunications reform in South Africa - a ten year perspective" can be found here.