Dennis Magaya

Career

He was a trainee engineer at Anglo-American before joining BP as country manager South Africa and GM Southern Africa – Alternative Energy Solutions at 26 years of age.

In 1998 he joined Motorola Southern Africa as the regional manager responsible for Sadc countries. At just 32 years old he became executive head of strategy for Cell C in South Africa, which was built to compete with giants MTN and Vodacom as the 3rd mobile operator in SA. He held several executive positions from technology planning, operations and board of directors for Virgin Mobile South Africa until he left to run his business. In 2007 Magaya started his own company Rubiem Technologies in 2007 in South Africa focusing on consultancy services.in South Africa which focuses on consultancy services.^[2]

Allegations of Corruption

In 2014, Magaya and his company, RubieM were accused of having been un-procedurally engaged by a government-owned telecommunications company, PowerTel Communications. PowerTel reportedly flouted tender procedures by appointing Magaya and his RubieM team as strategic experts in defiance of a State Procurement Board resolution. Initially, RubieM had drafted a 30 million plan for PowerTel, and at implementation stage, the SPB had argued his company could not take part in the implementation of the strategy to avoid conflict of interest.^[3]

The corruption allegations cost Magaya the chairmanship of a new ZBC board, into which he was appointed, and then fired within 24 hours.^[4]

In a written response sent to the media, Magaya denied the allegations and said that hat all my work is done with integrity and always within the laws of the land. He also argued that due to his involvement in PowerTel for the period he had been consulting, PowerTel had managed to become profitable.^[5]

RubieM was also caught up in a corruption case when in Swaziland in 2010, they were accused of having been awarded a contract by the Swaziland Post and Telecommunications Corporation without proper procedure.^[6]

References