The information society and telecommunication policy in the New South Africa.

Since the ANC Allience came to power in South Africa in 1994, the concept of the information society has been high on the political agenda. Information and comunication technology ICT and telecommunications from an improtant part of the governments development policy. On the one hand, government wants ICT to play an important role in the dlivery of information and service to its population. By way of tele-education and tele-fhealth, disadvantaged groups should get access to new and appropriate services. On the other hand, government realises that the wide-spread access to telecommunications infrastructure, and thus a new telecommunications policy, is instrumental in the spreading of services. The objective of this research is to criticaly analyse IS policy in the face of current theory on the information society. In the first part the political discours around IS will be confronted with these theories. The second part consists of an historical-diachronic analysis of policy, in which, on the one hand analysis focusses on policy formation, and on the other hand on its implementation, accuratness and sustainability. The confrontation between policy formulation and implementation should lead to new insights on the relation between both in a development context. In the last part the concusions of the former part are assessed in light of the political discourse and theory. The main goal is to assess the sometimes utopian and ethnocentric theory in the context of the South African reality.