Most made a profit that went directly to government. As would be the case for all government departments, operational budgets and capital investments were “subsidised” by the state using mentioned profits. That was before these profits got “privatised” and therefore no longer reinvested to feed...
We had one in our camp. As a roofie, you were only to use it after midnight, jippo tiekie tied to the "return" knob. One morning the RSM got us all on parade at five in the morning. Apparently telkom complained that a very large amount of calls were made on the phone but only about R5 was found...