Mike Sharman, 28, is tall, stubble-faced and boasts an incredible cleft in his chin. “I wanted to be an actor,” he says by way of introduction. “But my old man pointed out that might not be the best idea in SA.” Sharman isn’t an actor, though he briefly tried his hand at it despite his father’s remonstrations. Instead, he started a digital agency called Retroviral
MTN SA chief financial officer Zunaid Bulbulia came to the telecommunications industry almost by accident. It was December 1993 and Bulbulia, the son of a shoe salesman, was doing his articles for his CA degree at a Johannesburg accounting firm when he was asked by one of the firm’s senior
Stafford Masie, just 37, has had a highly eventful career, having been the first SA country manager for Google and working for multinational corporations like Novell. He’s now dabbling in numerous start-ups and technology businesses. TechCentral’s Craig Wilson
MTN SA MD Karel Pienaar is a smiling but imposing figure whose name commands respect in the halls of the company’s gleaming 14th Avenue head office in Fairlands, Johannesburg. Impossible as it sounds, having been part of MTN’s bid for a licence in SA, technically the
University of Cape Town alumnus Chris Pinkham has a long and illustrious career in the technology industry. He helped launch SA’s first Internet service provider, Internet Africa; he helped develop Amazon.com’s popular Elastic Compute
Mike Lawrie lives in a pleasant, suburban retirement village outside Pretoria. When he isn’t tending to his collection of succulents, or travelling with his wife, Lawrie keeps track of and contributes to various online forums and mailing lists. What few
Yossi Hasson, MD of open-source software specialist Synaq, is tall, dark, handsome and gifted. Which means my first instinct is to dislike him. However, Hasson proves to be as friendly as he is talented when I meet with him on a
Vox Telecom group MD Doug Reed is no stranger to the vagaries of the local telecommunications industry. The 52-year-old has made — and lost — a personal fortune in his career, but is warm and welcoming when I meet him at the company’s offices across the
Former international cricketer Clive Rice, who now runs a successful telecommunications business, admits to me when I meet him at his home in Linksfield, Johannesburg for this profile interview that he’s lost a great deal of interest in the sport that once dominated his
Icasa councillor William Currie is a soft-spoken, warm man who is passionate about the communications industry. Currie tells me over a meeting in his Sandton office that although he came from a technically minded family he somehow
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