{"id":556018,"date":"2024-08-19T19:07:14","date_gmt":"2024-08-19T17:07:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=556018"},"modified":"2024-08-19T19:07:21","modified_gmt":"2024-08-19T17:07:21","slug":"the-man-who-built-vodacom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/556018-the-man-who-built-vodacom.html","title":{"rendered":"The man who built Vodacom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Vodacom’s co-founder and first CEO, Alan Knott-Craig, the man dubbed the father of South Africa’s cellular industry, almost missed his calling in telecoms for a career in journalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Born on 8 May 1952 in Oudtshoorn, his family had a long history of owning and running small newspapers in the Eastern and Western Cape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His grandfather had been editor of the Worcester Advertiser and then bought the Graaff-Reinet Advertiser. His father was sent to Oudtshoorn to run the Oudtshoorn Courant and the Het Zuid Western.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Newspapers were the family business and passion, and Knott-Craig learned the ropes from experienced newsmen \u2014 including working with the old hot-type presses up close.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“One of my first holiday jobs was to clean the spaces between the letters \u2014 getting quite high sniffing turps for up to eight hours a day,” he said in a 2007 interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Had it not been for his father’s advice against pursuing a life in journalism, South Africa’s telecoms landscape may have looked very different today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Knott-Craig completed his compulsory military service in the navy, which he said was a big mistake as he was seasick for a year, and then went to university.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He enrolled for electrical engineering because he could get a bursary from Telkom and a spot at the University of Cape Town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He graduated cum laude in 1974. Years later, in 1988, he earned a Master of Business Leadership at the University of South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Knott-Craig joined Telkom after receiving his engineering degree to work back his bursary and ended up spending the bulk of his career at the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1991, after more than fifteen years at Telkom, the new chairman, Jack Clark, asked him to look into the feasibility of cellular phones for the South African market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Knott-Craig analysed the analogue and digital cellular systems on the market at the time and concluded that South Africa should leapfrog the older systems and settle on the GSM standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Knott-Craig, South Africa became the first country outside Europe to adopt GSM.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Vodacom’s executive team in the year 2000. Knott-Craig is near the centre.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This all happened amid furious negotiations between the ANC and NP that would lead to South Africa’s first Government of National Unity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Knott-Craig said the minister responsible for telecommunications at the time did not believe Telkom should control the new cellular industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He named former state enterprises minister Dawie de Villiers as the man behind the decision, although Piet Welgemoed was the Minister of Post and Telecommunications at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ANC was suspicious of the NP’s intentions, arguing that it was seeking to privatise telecommunications ahead of the 1994 elections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was agreed that Telkom would hold a stake in the new cellular operator and that a share would be sold to a trade union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Initially, we had discussions with a team that included Dr Nthato Motlana and Andile Ncaba. This process was an education for me. My generation had grown up fearing the ANC,” Knott-Craig said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It was wonderful getting to know the negotiating team and seeing just how well the new SA could work. It gave me great hope for the future.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the final stages of the negotiations, now-President Cyril Ramaphosa and former defence minister Roelf Meyer helped put the finishing touches on Vodacom’s revised licence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Knott-Craig tells it, the pair popped into and out of Codesa meetings at the World Trade Centre, where they were writing South Africa’s new constitution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vodacom was born on 19 May 1993, with Telkom owning 50% of the company, Vodafone holding 35%, and Johann Rupert’s Rembrandt having 15%. The BEE stake would only be claimed later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Vodacom launched 3G in 2003, offering much faster mobile data speeds. In 2006, it introduced 3G High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA), which offered speeds to rival Telkom’s ADSL services. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Curiously, it took years before any union took up the shares that the ANC had negotiated so hard for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marcel Golding and Johnny Copelyn of Hosken Consolidated Investments (HCI) eventually bought the 5% stake in 1996.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HCI was an investment arm of the South African Clothing & Textile Workers Union. It paid R118 million for its stake in Vodacom and sold it back to Vodafone and Rembrandt (then VenFin) in 2002 for R1.5 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once Vodacom had been formed in 1993, Johann Rupert asked Knott-Craig to fly to Europe and meet one of Richemont’s top branding people, Leon Crouse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Knott-Craig’s major achievements include convincing shareholders to spend millions on advertising campaigns to promote Vodacom’s products and services, even before the company was launched in 1994.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He believed that first-mover advantage was essential in establishing a strong brand, allowing them to dominate the South African mobile market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vodacom’s “Hello, Vodacom!”<\/a> and “Yebo Gogo” ads are legendary, and they firmly entrenched the brand as iconic in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Alan Knott-Craig (right) with Johan Engelbrecht, Andries Delport, Chris Ross, Pieter Uys, and Barry Vlok in the front row in 2003.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Under Knott-Craig leadership, Vodacom put tremendous focus on innovation and was behind many world firsts in the mobile industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a firm focus on network quality. Knott-Craig was fanatical about having the best mobile network in South Africa and went to extreme lengths to achieve it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are many stories about Knott-Craig experiencing a dropped call while driving and immediately raking the head of networks over the coals for the issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Knott-Craig was never content with a sub-par network and always had to outperform his biggest rival, MTN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The battle between Vodacom and MTN became so fierce that the late President Nelson Mandela had to step in<\/a> to resolve the dispute between the two mobile operators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This battle for network supremacy was excellent for South African consumers and the country as a whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Knott-Craig also laid the foundations for Vodacom’s stable leadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Vodacom’s leadership in 2005.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

While Knott-Craig only officially became Vodacom CEO in 1996, he was the company’s leader from its founding in his capacity as Telkom’s senior general manager of mobile communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He served as Vodacom’s leader for about fifteen years, until Pieter Uys succeeded him in October 2008.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Uys was Vodacom’s chief operating officer (COO) before stepping into the CEO’s shoes and had been with the company since its founding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before being appointed COO, he was also general manager of Vodacom’s South African operations and managing director of Vodacom South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Uys served as CEO for four years before handing over the reins to current Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub in 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joosub joined Vodacom in March 1994 after completing his articles and held various positions within the company before he was appointed CEO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before getting the leading role, he was Vodacom South Africa’s managing director for six years and Vodafone Spain’s CEO for three years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alan Knott-Craig is considered the father of South Africa’s cellular industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":556106,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[681,96712,355,1952,96708,21385,21203,42,96711,25173,109,41],"class_list":["post-556018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cellular","tag-alan-knott-craig","tag-andile-ncaba","tag-cell-c","tag-cyril-ramaphosa","tag-jack-clark","tag-johann-rupert","tag-leon-crouse","tag-mtn","tag-nthato-motlana","tag-roelf-meyer","tag-telkom","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556018"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=556018"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":556102,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556018\/revisions\/556102"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}