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Comment by pgt | Hacker News Reader

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40248231

tldr; Starlink doesn't work in South Africa, Elon's home country, because the ANC and its lawfare arm ICASA demands they hand over 30% to the State because of BEE laws.

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This is misleading, Starlink does not need to provide "30% to the state", they only have to give 30% ownership to a local company with historically disenfranchised owners providing real economic value to South Africa. This can be a private company.

Does ownership ever get assigned to people who aren't political cronies of the current government?

Yes, all the time, because it is a private arrangement between the foreign company and the local company. Private companies are in no meaningful sense "cronies" of the government, even if they were accredited by the formal regulating body. You cannot point to a single major case of B-BEEE favouritism, it is a legal framework that is almost always impartial.

Hitachi famously got caught doing exactly this: using b-bbee as a front to funnel bribe money to the ruling party.

No, that had nothing to do with B-BBEE abuse.

In South Africa I would be very surprised if that ever happened. This is a country that went from exporting electricity to daily blackouts because of corruption.

It is easy to export electricity when you only need to serve 10% of the population.

Whose fault is it the electrical grid apparently, according to your thesis, hasn't been upgraded in the 30+ years since apartheid ended?

Although your claim is literally untrue as the grid has been upgraded, the answer is: mostly the apartheid government. They left the ANC with a grid that served only 10% of the population, which makes it very difficult to upgrade, especially in a country with rampant poverty leading to cable theft, corruption, and general lack of infrastructure.

Whatever percent of the population the grid serves, electricity production is lower than it was 20 years ago https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PRENEL01ZAA656N

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