Pretoria - Public Enterprises Minister Malusi Gigaba has appointed six non-executive board members and a chairman of Broadband Infraco.
Mandla Ngcobo, 51, who is an admitted attorney and holds an LLB and LLM Degree, is the incoming chairman. He was previously a Chief Executive Officer at Telkom Media and has served on the boards of the 2010 Soccer World Cup Bid Committee and the 2010 Soccer World Cup Local Organising Committee.
The changes to the board were announced at a Special General Meeting of Broadband Infraco on Tuesday.
The company is charged with bringing down South Africa's telecommunication costs by making long-distance communications infrastructure available to competing private sector companies.
The changes follow similar changes at other state-owned entities such as Eskom and Denel.
The board members are Nadia Bulbulia whose skills are in policy-making, strategy and Corporate Governance and Information Communication Technology (ICT); Salim Essa, who is skilled in economics and risk management; Meta Maponya, a qualified chartered accountant; Dr. Anthony Githiari, whose skills are in strategy, business development and ICT as well as Xoliswa Kakana and Nokuthula Selamolela.
They succeed the outgoing non-executive chairman Andrew Mthembu and non-executive directors Nolo Letele and Cornelius Groesbeek.
Two non-executive directors, namely, Sydney Mabalayo and Shakeel Meer were re-appointed.
"There were five vacancies on the board, four of which have now been filled," said the department.
Gigaba thanked the outgoing members of the board for their service to the company and the country and has further called on them to avail themselves again should the government require their services in the future.
He added that the strengthening of the board of directors opened a new chapter in Broadband Infraco's story. The new board had been strengthened in areas of technical, regulatory and financial oversight.
The need to attract skills relevant to a particular industry, the need for regular review of boards of directors are some of the reasons given by Gigaba on the department's policy on the composition of boards of state-owned companies, and the factors guiding the appointment or retirement of directors.
The South African economy requires that by 2014 the ICT industry should have produced 30 000 additional engineers, further strengthening measures to ensure greater and more equitable access to science and maths education at secondary level and expanding bridging programmes to tertiary courses.
