Gungubele to Musk: What’s 30% between a trillionaire and his birth country? - TimesLIVE

Deputy communications and digital technology minister Mondli Gungubele said the South African government is happy to welcome Elon Musk’s Starlink into the local market, but urged him to respect the nation’s equity laws in the process.

Speaking at Bloomberg’s 2026 Africa Business Media Innovators (ABMI) gathering in Hermanus in the Western Cape on Monday, the deputy minister said the South Africa-born trillionaire’s satellite internet service provider would assist in the government’s ambitions to enhance connectivity.

“There are a lot of private operators in Africa … [but] we always need more. That’s why the president is expressing the word, saying we are ready. Just in Greece now, the president was saying that we’re ready for business.”

Musk has been highly critical of BBBEE as a policy that aims to address past economic injustices by making patterns of ownership more representative of the country’s demographics, even going as far as calling the policy “racist”.

Musk even took to X to claim that he would not be able to bring Starlink to SA because he was not black. Gungubele said it would be beneficial if Musk stopped to consider the urgent need for South Africa’s patterns of economic ownership to be transformed.

“When you speak about multinational corporations, private investment, and we are saying, in South Africa — you know, where we come from — the exclusion of millions of South Africans, both from infrastructure, access to education, access to so many things.

“It should not be ridiculous, therefore, to say, when we invest here, can you get along with us, walk with us in this journey of improving, minimising inequality, reducing all the discriminatory laws and all the affinities that are unequal? We are saying, for instance, 30% here.”

These discussions have predated what has become a hostile bilateral relationship between SA and the US, where Musk previously served as the head of US President Donald Trump’s department of government efficiency (Doge). Gungubele said that beyond the merits of economic transformation, SA’s sovereignty as a nation must also be respected.

“To me, sovereignty of the developing countries is when the multinationals sit down in that country, the invested country, and agree, for the temporary, … transfer. How are our digital science engineers going to access those systems? How, when you leave, will we be able to have acquired capabilities that can help us to self-determine?

“Already now, we’re dealing with the consequences of economic global concentration. Many were excluded. But if the economists and the learned people will understand the importance of discriminative capabilities, when there is a crisis, the country does not depend on one or two countries. But that’s the reality of the world. So it makes business sense to help the developing countries to acquire capabilities,” Gungubele said.

Asked about how AI is influencing SA’s government policy, Gungubele said SA’s policies are such that it must exploit the transformative capability of AI, but make sure that, in the areas of governance, AI continues to enhance and develop humanity.