Cell C’s newly appointed chief financial officer, Robert Pasley, wanted to be a university professor, lecturing in theoretical physics, but pragmatism led him into the corporate world of finance and strategy. Pasley completed a
Browsing: People
DStv Online CEO John Kotsaftis, 41, is the quintessential geek. He tells me as much when I sit down to interview him in one of the boardrooms at DStv Online’s offices in Randburg, Johannesburg. His love of technology started with a friend’s gaming console. “He got an Atari
Almost everyone has a mobile phone, however basic, making it the perfect tool to educate, market to or communicate with consumers. Taking this premise as its starting point, 42-year-old South African Gustav Praekelt started the Praekelt Foundation as a place to create applications and services for basic mobile phones
Juliana Rotich co-founded Ushahidi, a Kenyan-based nonprofit tech company, in 2008 with the aim of using technology to map reports of violence in the wake of Kenya’s closely contested December 2007 general election. Today, Ushahidi continues to create open-source software
A thick Australian accent belies the fact that digital agency Quirk’s CEO, 37-year-old Justin Spratt, is a South African and African at heart. “I f***ing love this place,” he says colourfully when I meet with him at the company’s Sandton offices. “I’m exceptionally passionate about Africa in general,” he quickly adds
Zimbabwean-born Democratic Alliance MP and shadow communications minister Marian Shinn is no career politician, having joined parliament only after the last general election in 2009. For most of her life, she was involved in journalism and, later, public relations. Shinn, 62, grew up in
In Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, alien species from across the universe communicate using a “small, yellow, leech-like” animal called the Babel fish, which “feeds on brain-wave energy, absorbing all unconscious frequencies and then excreting telepathically
Serial entrepreneur and Dimension Data cofounder Richard Came is warm and welcoming when he greets me at his hilltop home in Johannesburg’s leafy suburb of Houghton. With a panoramic view of Johannesburg’s northern suburbs, the elegant and enormous house is an apt reminder of the business successes
Rich Mulholland started his working career as a roadie, hauling gear on and off stage and operating the lighting at gigs for the likes of Iron Maiden and Def Leppard. Now 38, Mulholland runs Missing Link, South Africa’s largest presentation specialist
With hair clipped close to his head and a speedy gait, Derek Hanekom, 59, is energetic but welcoming when he sits down with me at a roadside restaurant table on Anderson Street in downtown Johannesburg. He puts his Apple iPhone on the table, orders coffee and sparkling water, and, when I ask him for his