At the end of July, the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) announced it had selected Nexus Connexion as the empowerment group it would prefer to receive a 19 percent stake in the second national telephone operator, or SNO. The selection didn`t come cheap. Nexus still has to prove it can raise R2 billion in capital at a time when nobody anywhere is willing to fund telecommunications companies. It must also effectively give away 40 percent of its consortium, or find retail investors willing to buy the shares that have both the black credentials to satisfy Icasa and the money to spend. Both are tall orders.

Yet those conditions are only part of the trouble it faces. If all goes according to plan, Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri will already have made a pronouncement on the selection by the time of publication. Icasa can recommend, but only Matsepe-Casaburri can give the final nod.

While she is expected to confirm the selection, which is both unanimous and as near to bullet-proof as Icasa could make it, she is under some pressure not to do so, or to add her own set of conditions.