Yunus Carrim will be sworn in as minister of communications on 10 July.
Yunus Carrim replaces Dina Pule who was appointed in October 2011. Dina Pule replaced Roy Padayachie who was the minister of communication for exactly a year, after he replaced the as controversial and out of touch Siphiwe Nyanda in October 2010 in another cabinet reshuffle. Siphiwe Nyanda replaced Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri who died in April 2009 in May 2009.
As South Africa's switch from analogue to digital terrestrial television (DTT), a process known as digital migration fell further and further behind and is currently the joke of the African continent, the embattled Dina Pule was mired in allegations of corruption and ongoing fights with the media and scandalous stories such as allegation that her boyfriend bought her Christian Louboutin shoes with funds meant for a telecommunications indaba.
Under Dina Pule's tenure as minister of communications the SABC once again imploded at top level with bitter in-fighting between the SABC board members which spilled into the public sphere and saw the resignations and decimation of the entire SABC board.
The public broadcaster currently sits with an emergency interim board, and with Dina Pule who was accused of undue ministerial interference into the operations of the public broadcaster.
Dina Pule is currently investigated by both parliament's ethics committee as well as by the public protector's office of Thuli Madonsela.
"Dina Pule failed dysmally," said Vuyo Mvoko, the SABC's contributing editor on the SABC's news bulletin on Tuesday evening. "Dina Pule didn't help things. She didn't even show a little effort which people could appreciate and say that maybe with time she could get better. With each week, with each month that passed by it was just a feeling that she was getting worse and worse and just getting a bigger liability."
