It's not so much social networking sites that would be great, but the possibility of free interactive education. The quality of teaching that most (poor and black) South African school children are subjected to is shockingly poor.
4 karma · joined March 26, 2010
Things are changing, but there are issues that more undersea cables and a tiny opening in the banking system won't be able to fix.
You still have to pay Telkom for a voice land-line, and that adds to the cost. It can still take months to get a land-line, and waiting for an ADSL connection is also a problem, so many people don't bother.
Telkom remains a de-facto monopoly for fixed lines (Neotel's current offerings still seem to be wireless, and of variable quality), and the South African government needs to be even more aggressive IMO in undoing the disaster of Telkom's mid-90's state-granted monopoly, and it also needs to take a tougher regulatory line with mobile providers. I'll really start celebrating when cheap uncapped wireless/3G becomes available at reasonable rates.
PayPal is also a good start, but the terms and conditions are strict. You can't leave the money in your PayPal/FNB account for longer than 30 days, and all transactions need to be reported to the Reserve Bank for exchange-control purposes through the FNB website. There is also a prohibition against "bulking", so I guess you may need to report and withdraw money for each transaction individually, meaning higher fees (see above point about rent seeking).
On a related note, exhange controls are a relic of the past, and should have gone years ago. Even though for the average person they are moot (the offshore allowances are now quite large) the amount of regulatory pain they put one through is deeply disruptive. I recall an former employer needing excon permission to purchase a developer suite from overseas - not the way to be part of the hi-tech global economy.