If Starlink Wants to Operate in South Africa, It Must Respect South African Law

South Africa’s stand-off with Starlink is more than a licensing dispute. It belongs to a far larger global story of the growing power of multinational tech giants, the deepening concentration of wealth, and the struggle of developing nations to assert economic sovereignty in an age of digital dominance.

Communications Minister Solly Malatsi’s proposal to introduce Equity Equivalent Investment Programmes (EEIPs) for telecommunications licensing has reignited these tensions. EEIPs offer foreign companies an alternative to B-BBEE ownership requirements. Critics, including Khusela Diko, chair of Parliament’s communications portfolio committee, argue that the proposal is a thinly disguised attempt to allow Starlink to bypass South Africa’s transformation laws.

Her concern is not misplaced. It is structural.

Global research shows that inequality is no longer an accidental by-product of modern capitalism but the system’s organising principle. Between 1990 and 2024, the share of national income going to capital rather than labour increased in countries representing nearly three-quarters of the world’s population. Corporate power has surged. Markups charged by large companies have quadrupled since 1980. The share of global profits collected by multinationals jumped from 4% in 1975 to 18% in 2019. Meanwhile, 85% of the world’s population earns noincome from capital at all. Between 2019 and 2024, CEO pay rose by 50%, while workers’ wages barely grew by 1%.

Wealth inequality now drives global instability. The world is richer than ever with US$480 trillion in total wealth that is more concentrated than at any time in modern history. The top 1% captured 41% of all new wealth created between 2000 and 2024; the bottom half received just 1%. The number of billionaires has risen above 3,000, collectively holding wealth equivalent to 14% of global GDP.

This is not just an economic problem. It is a political one.

In this global context, South Africa’s transformation laws take on heightened importance. B-BBEE is not a “race-based law”, as critics suggest but a constitutional response to a centuries-long system of racial dispossession that is still extant and expanding. It exists because wealth in South Africa, like wealth globally, tends to accumulate in the hands of those who already have it. Without intervention, inequality becomes self-replicating.

Telecommunications is a strategic sector. Digital infrastructure shapes everything from economic participation to political information flows. Letting a foreign tech company operate in this domain without meaningful local ownership or empowerment obligations would weaken the very project of transformation, while deepening dependence on global corporate power.

Starlink’s technological benefits connectivity, speed, rural reach are real. But they cannot be traded for a dilution of South African law. South Africa is not asking Starlink to do anything extraordinary. Multinationals comply with local laws everywhere else in the world. South Africa should not be treated as an exception because the company in question is powerful, popular, or backed by a global billionaire. Allowing one multinational to sidestep transformation obligations would set a dangerous precedent. It would confirm to every large corporation that political pressure or public sympathy is enough to secure exemption from the rules designed to promote equity.

Economic transformation is not an inconvenience but a safeguard for democracy in a world tilting towards more extreme inequality. Starlink is welcome in South Africa.

Its innovation is welcome. Its potential benefits are welcome. But the country’s laws are not optional. Transformation is not negotiable. And sovereignty is not for sale—whether to foreign governments or to billionaires.

If Starlink wishes to operate here, it must do what every other company is required to do, which is to follow South African law, contribute to equity, and participate in building a more just economy. Anything less would simply deepen the very inequalities that South Africa is constitutionally bound to confront.