As was the case with broadcasting, reform apartheid set in motion a complex process in which an inescapable reform of the South African telecommunications sector became tied to the subtle politics of the government's effort to maintain white dominance in a post-apartheid dispensation. Even more than with broadcasting, internal sectoral dynamics set the reform process in motion in telecommunications. Recall that in the effort to meet the needs of business and begin to extend service to black neighborhoods, the South African Posts and Telecommunications had borrowed heavily to digitalize its network and expand its infrastructure in the 1980s. Despite, or perhaps as a consequence of, this effort, the SAPT came open to criticism for its alleged goldplating, inefficiency, bloated workforce, and considerable debt. Trashed in the de Villiers Report (Republic of South Africa, 1989) and facing competition from prospective new entrants deploying new technologies by the end of the decade, the SAPT looked to be a parastatal ripe for change in a sector badly in need of reform. The SAPT was the subject of a legislative effort in 1990 to separate telecommunications from posts, to remove both from the line responsibilities of the ministry, and to prepare the parastatal for privatization.

A good chunk of the South African telecommunications story is little different from those of other countries in the past several years.