By Strive Masiyiwa
In December 1996, the Constitutional Court, ordered the Minister of Telecoms to end the PTC monopoly for a second time. They gave her six weeks to run a tender process and select an operator, or simply allow Econet to start operating.
Whilst many people, expected her to let us operate since we already had a system, and had been fighting for nearly 5 years, I knew through my network of sympathisers that a massive conspiracy, was being hatched, to try and thwart us, once and for all.
The Minister set up a Technical Committee (TC), and within 2 weeks, they published a public tender. Whilst many people wondered how they had managed such an extraordinary feat, in such a short time frame. It would all be revealed spectacularly, in another court battle!
We submitted a tender response, along with five other companies. Exactly 4 weeks later, on 28th February 1997, the Minister announced that another company had won the tender, and was immediately issued the license. They announced that we had come fourth, out of five bidders, even though we had a working system, on the ground!
The following day, the Minister announced that they had complied fully with the order of the court and she also directed that I be arrested for illegal possession of telecommunications equipment.
The headline of of one of the newspapers read:
“Masiyiwa’s Dream Crumbles”
That morning, I received a very interesting visitor…
“…The Lord has His way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of His feet…”
(Nahum1:3).
To be continued…
