Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams

The merged departments of communications and telecommunications & postal services will in future be known as the department of communications & digital technologies (DCDT), President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Friday.

The department, which will be led at the political level by minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, is the result of the merger of DTPS and communications, announced in 2018 by the president. The merger process is still ongoing.

In January 2019, GCIS, government’s communications agency, said that the planned merger of the departments was “gaining traction”, with Ndabeni-Abrahams urging senior staff members to work quickly to conclude the “configuration”.

Ramaphosa’s predecessor, Jacob Zuma, split the department of communications in 2014 in a controversial move that was almost universally slammed by industry players and analysts given the move ran contrary to the industry trend of convergence.

GCIS said in January that the two departments — telecoms and communications — had less than three months to put together a “comprehensive master merger plan, and a possible model that can be used by other departments who could also face a similar merger in the future”.

Ramaphosa announced a new national executive on 29 May, made up of 28 ministries — down from 36 previously.  — © 2019 NewsCentral Media