Maziv CEO Dietlof Mare has outlined an aggressive plan to integrate the assets acquired through the landmark Vodacom transaction and ramp up fibre construction across South Africa, saying the strengthened balance sheet gives the group the firepower to expand at scale into underserved markets.
Speaking at Remgro’s interim results presentation on Wednesday, Mare said the immediate priority is to incorporate both the metro fibre and fibre-to-the-home assets contributed by Vodacom as part of its R11-billion entry into Maziv, and to monetise them as quickly as possible.
“We have this untapped, unconnected market in South Africa that we can actually play in, with huge demand for fibre and enterprise growth,” Mare said.
The Vodacom transaction – in which Vodacom acquired a 30% equity interest in Maziv, the holding company for Vumatel and Dark Fibre Africa – was implemented on 1 December 2025 after years in regulatory limbo.
Mare said the deal has materially strengthened Maziv’s balance sheet, allowing the group to resume building at the pace it had maintained before the transaction process forced a holding pattern on new construction. During the period under review, Vumatel passed approximately 200 000 new homes – a modest figure by its historical standards – as it waited for the deal to close.
DFA network rehabilitation
On the enterprise side, Mare said DFA has undertaken a major network rehabilitation programme, replacing 12 000km of fibre in metro areas with newer technology. The upgrade includes the installation of underground dry cabinets closer to customer premises, which Mare said will improve installation speed, enhance the customer experience and create value in the fibre-to-the-business segment.
The rehabilitation slowed link growth in the short term and added costs, but Mare said the network is now futureproofed.
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“We had to do huge amounts of work on the stabilisation and rehabilitation of the network, but we’ve futureproofed it,” he said. “We have new fibre technology very close to the premises of businesses and buildings in South Africa.”
Mare said the accelerating roll-out of 5G is also creating significant demand for fibre backhaul, which plays directly into DFA’s hands.
“You can’t densify 5G and roll out 5G across South Africa without a fibre solution,” he told Remgro investors.
DFA currently has 12 600 sites connected to fibre, a figure Mare expects to grow as the group expands its metro coverage and integrates the Vodacom assets.
Fibre-to-the-business links grew 9% to just under 55 000, despite DFA deliberately controlling the pace of new connections during the network upgrade. Mare flagged this as the segment with the biggest growth potential, pointing to strong SME demand for affordable and reliable fibre.
For Vumatel, the country’s largest fibre-to-the-home provider with more than two million homes passed, its biggest growth opportunity in the “Reach” and “Key” segments, which target lower-income households.
“This is where we expand. This is where we will build the million homes that we committed to the Competition Commission, and this is where we believe the future revenue and growth will come from,” he said.
The operational momentum translated into a strong set of financial results. CIVH reported revenue growth of 11% to R3.76-billion and Ebitda growth of 11% to R2.46-billion. Headline earnings swung to R216-million from a loss of R248-million in the comparative period.
Vumatel’s revenue grew 15% to R2.17-billion, with Ebitda up 18% to R1.5-billion and operating earnings surging 60%. DFA posted 4% revenue growth and 10% headline earnings growth to R219-million.
‘Expanding again’
Free cash flow before capital expenditure increased 31% to R1.5-billion, while cash generated after tax and interest rose by a similar margin.
Mare said the focus going forward is on sustaining the positive headline earnings trajectory, capitalising on the network upgrades at DFA, driving penetration across Vumatel’s expanding footprint and executing the Vodacom integration.
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“We have to start expanding again, start building the way we used to build, and make sure we keep our market share in the fibre-to-the-home space in South Africa,” he said. – (c) 2026 NewsCentral Media
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