Here’s another example of the very superficial journalism that the Gauteng Online debacle continues to receive.
The scary thing is not that they’re doing a bad job on site at the schools. The scary thing is that the deal was structured as a lease model. That means that these billions (R3bn, last I heard) were paid to:
- Set up a well-connected data centre.
- Set up a wireless mesh network.
- Connect schools to that network.
- Provision computer labs in the schools.
The SMMT consortium that “won” the bid was paid more than enough to do all of this, but here’s the kicker. At the end of the lease, the tax payer has no claim on anything but the computer labs in the schools. The consortium can go ahead and rent out the rest of it (the data centre and the network) to whomever they please.
So, in effect, they’ve been paid R3bn to set up a privately owned commercial venture that South African tax payers won’t benefit from at all.
And yes, this is the deal that was in progress when I extracted myself from Clue Technologies, which went on to effectively become a member of the SMMT consortium.
