South African who took on Meta talks new $264m tech company

The end of 2022 was grim, to say the least, for South African entrepreneur Eldrid Jordaan. As a torrid year drew to a close, he was counting the million-dollar cost of giving world tech giant Meta a bloody nose; meanwhile his mother‘s health was fading and Jordaan himself ended up a patient in a Cape Town cardiac high-care unit. It was all too much for Jordaan. He resigned, sold his shares and walked away from South African-based tech company GovTech – the outfit he had founded in 2015 and launched in 2018, with the help of R10m ($570,000) from an angel investor.

“It was a sad moment,” he says.

Less than two years on, at the age of 46, older and wiser, Jordaan is back with a bang. He is raising millions in Europe for his new tech company Suppple and has equally abundant ambitions, with plans to buy up data centres in Africa. Night turned to day in less than two years and Jordaan is loving it.

“We definitely might sound a bit arrogant. For me, I would like Suppple to be the largest technology outfit on the African continent with a focus on social impact. It is a bold vision, but I believe we have what it takes,” he says over lunch at a London hotel close to the Houses of Parliament.

Westminster is an appropriate venue for this interview, since government business was one of the mainstays of GovChat. In short, it is a WhatsApp-based application programming interface (API): that is, software that allows one application to communicate with another through requests and responses.

Jordaan founded GovChat – with a staff of five – to connect South Africans with elusive government services.

“There was a big disconnect between government and communities. People didn’t even know who their government representative was!” he says.

GovChat took root deeply and rapidly, garnering an estimated 13m users and sending more than 600m messages a year.

Among other services, it helps millions of South Africans collect their social grants, connects them with their ward councillors and gives the power to rate government services from post offices to clinics.

“There was a need for talk about corruption and governance. You could monitor services provided by local government in 257 municipalities. If you drop a location pin, no matter which municipality you are in, you can contact any one of 10,000 ward councillors,” he says of the birth of GovChat.

People could also check on potholes and on refuse removal, and get their Covid-19 results; all on a citizen service recognised by the South African government.

Battling Meta

This progress came to a grinding halt the day a letter landed from Facebook – now Meta – the custodian of the WhatsApp platform which was the conduit for the service.

“Meta threatened GovChat for allegedly breaking their terms of service. They came to us with this letter saying they were going to offboard us, but at the same time we would need to – with all the government contracts that we had – they would need a direct relationship with those government entities. Literally no notice, no nothing. Meta said, on a Thursday, that by Monday they were going to switch us off,” says Jordaan.

I recall interviewing Jordaan at the time and he sounded, to say the least, annoyed.

“I think that Facebook thinks that Africa is the armpit of the world – in their conduct, in the way they engaged with us, it just kind of displays that. They definitely did not think that we were going to go all the way,” he told me not long after.

At the time, Meta came back with this statement: “WhatsApp helps to provide people with important information from trusted sources, and we are aware of the role the service [GovChat] plays in connecting South African citizens with their government. That’s why we want to work with GovChat in compliance with internationally recognised regulatory standards to provide this service.

“However, GovChat has repeatedly refused to comply with our policies which are designed to protect citizens and their information, preferring to prioritise its own commercial interests over the public. We will continue to defend WhatsApp from abuse and protect our users.”

And so to law

GovChat took legal advice – which said there was a possible breach of competition laws.

“As soon as we started creating a serious amount of traffic, we started getting these issues,” Jordaan told me at the time.

“The rules they apply are not consistent. They say GovChat should not collect personal and identifiable information. GovChat adheres to those terms, but they [Meta] allow other partners and stakeholders to do the exact opposite. They allow other platforms to collect ID numbers and personal information, but GovChat does not do that.”

The company went to the regulator – the South Africa’s Competition Commission – to seek an interdict. This was granted for six months, on the understanding that the case would be referred to the competition

authorities for investigation. One of the first counters that Meta came up with at the hearing was jurisdiction.

“They said WhatsApp was based in Ireland and Meta based in Silicon Valley, and if we had to take them on, we had to take them on in those territories. Facebook Africa is a company registered in South Africa, moreover, this was the address the company was using to write to the competition authorities. We won that argument,” says Jordaan.

“The Competition Commission found that they had sufficient evidence to recommend to the Competition Tribunal that Meta be prosecuted and fined up to 10% of its turnover on the African continent. This could see billions of rand being paid into the South African fiscus.”

A longer wait

The latest word, according to Jordaan, is that the Competition Tribunal will hand down its decision on 18 August 2025.

It is hard to imagine that Meta – with its powerful lawyers – will merely cough up 10% of its African turnover and move on. If the result goes that way, Jordaan believes there is likely to be an appeal and more arguments, which could take years and suck up millions more in legal fees.

For GovChat – the tech company Jordaan built – it could prove a pyrrhic victory. The legal costs have amounted to at least R20m – more than a million dollars. Jordaan maintains it was worth every penny and has no regrets, but admits the battles have taken a heavy toll.

“It definitely had a huge financial implication. It was a really, really tough period for the shareholders of GovChat.

“Even though we won, and legally won for that matter, it came with restrictions, it meant that we couldn’t apply any new use cases to the technology.

“Let’s say another government department wanted to use GovChat and we needed to adapt the technology for – let’s say – the Department of Home Affairs wanting you to be able to renew your passport. We couldn’t add any new uses while this case was going on. It cost us a lot of business. It became a very difficult period.”

The ups and downs of a tech tryer

For Jordaan it was a major milestone and a lesson on a path towards a life as a tech entrepreneur. It all began in a background soaked in South Africa’s political struggle. His path led from smoky jazz halls, through a spell as a tie-wearing public servant – as a ministerial advisor – to the cutting edge of tech.

In the tech world, Jordaan started with a fleeting spell with the doomed South African messaging service Mxit.

Many South Africans, now in their 40s, will have fond memories of sending messages about their homework and girlfriends on Mxit in their teenage years. For some it was their first experience of bulk messaging over a cell phone.

It didn’t last. Mxit was worth millions one day and the emergence of smartphones effectively killed it off the next.

“It was a Kodak moment for me. It wasn’t about funding, the RMB boys bought it from Naspers. It was simply a matter of the relevance of technology,” he says of the trials of Mxit.

In many ways, Jordaan was born into the struggle against apartheid. His father, Paul, was a political activist in the trade unions and member of the United Democratic Front alongside current South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and former ambassador to London Cheryl Carolus.

Activists would congregate at the family home in Cape Town, when Jordaan was a child, to debate around the kitchen table. They included the late intellectual Jakes Gerwel, who was to become one of Nelson Mandela’s right-hand men in his first years in power.

Jordaan makes it clear, however, that his business is apolitical. He is encouraged by the first steps of the new Government of National Unity which emerged from this year’s elections in South Africa.

“Political parties are starting to respect the will of the people. Business is being given space to respect the will of the people. I believe what has happened needed to happen. I am very excited for the future of South Africa. The more diverse it is, the more it becomes unstoppable – like the Springboks! When you become diverse, magic happens!”

His diverse career began with a sprinkle of magic, as a professional jazz drummer, inspired by Miles Davis, at the age of 16. Up to the age of 27, he was a session drummer for everything from gospel music, to jazzman Wayne Bosch, to hard rocker Karen Zoid.

Into the cloud

These days, sweet music for Jordaan emanates from the bourses of Europe. In May, he rang the bell at the Luxembourg Stock Exchange. Suppple’s listing on the exchange brought a £200m ($264m) market capitalisation, at £2 a share.

”Luxembourg gives us access to global financing because the scale at which we are growing in incredible,” he says. “It brings the business to the world. The cost of the financing is a lot cheaper than on the African continent.”

The capital raised will be invested by Jordaan into his next tech dream.

“The next big move is we are getting into the purchasing of data centres. We are going to go into cloud,” he says.

“We believe, as African innovators, [data centres are] best owned by those who understand the needs of its people. We believe it cannot just be the West that offers those services to the continent; if you want to talk about data sovereignty, data privacy and data security, we believe, as African innovators, it is best owned by the people that understand the needs of its people and not by the West.”

Jordaan says he is prepared to spend at least R150m ($8.5m), in the next five years, buying up South African data centres.

Other technologies are also being offered. A taste of what the company has in mind is the application of Suppple technology to help governments keep out counterfeit goods with the help of bar codes at borders.

“We are now going to apply that technology in 115 countries. The big one is tobacco and alcohol products and pharmaceuticals. It is a massive, massive, challenge. There is a safety risk in medical products. The amount of money we lose to the fiscus to counterfeit goods alone is hundreds of millions of rand.”

What are the biggest challenges the firm faces?

“Getting the right people,” Jordaan responds. “We are very fortunate to have amazing technologists and amazing executives in a lean structure. One of the big challenges around that is that we have a skills development challenge on the African continent. If you look at the needs around cybersecurity, software developers and cyber experts, there is a big need for those skills. There is a lot of work but you are limited with skilled resources on the African continent. It is important for us to upskill young people,” says Jordaan.

At the age of 46, Jordaan has a lot on his plate. I ask him whether, in the cut-and-thrust of the tech world in Africa, he would have done anything differently?

“Nothing,” he says with a smile.

“I will not make the same mistakes again. It is a journey, that is the mindset of start-ups – no short cuts.”

Meanwhile, he waits to see whether Meta will be asked to pay when the Competition Tribunal rules in August.

“All we did was lay a complaint!” he sighs.