Tech Transfer

“M-Web: The big black hole,” blazed the headline on the very first issue of Brainstorm, exactly 11 years ago this month. Riffing on the ISP’s ‘big black box’ advertising campaign, its bold, handsome cover featured Antonie Roux. It asked whether the return to South Africa of the Naspers Group’s prodigal son, as head of the group’s big consumer ISP, could brighten his future.

Jason Norwood-Young and I flew down to the company’s impressive network control centre north of Cape Town, to meet the irascible, conservatively mustachioed man, who with his background in pay television seemed an anachronism in the youthful, flashy internet world of the time.