Twenty years after the Windhoek Declaration on press freedom

MXit like Herman
By Andre Bothma
Andre Bothma is Head of Content at
mobile chat platform MXit. He’s spent
<strong>the</strong> bulk of <strong>the</strong> last decade involved in
advertising, publishing, web marketing
and commercial writing. He has a
keen interest in most things business,
entrepreneurship and technology related.
He lives in Cape Town where, he
says, his frankness tends to polarise
opinions.
118 | Media in Africa - 2011
“The term ‘black swan’ has come to
mean an event or discovery whose
existence was not predictable… and
whose effect yields surprising and
unexpected results.”
This quote comes from US
investment analyst John Mauldlin
on Nassim Taleb’s novel “The Black
Swan: The Impact of <strong>the</strong> Highly
Improbable”.
Throughout history, great movements
have started with an innovative
idea. Such ideas frequently
stem from an innate dissatisfaction
with <strong>the</strong> status quo. The idea for
MXit (pronounced Mix It) was born
out of Namibian tech entrepreneur
Herman Heunis’ belief that textbased
communication could — and
should — be more affordable to <strong>the</strong>
masses.
The desire to set communication
free, and create a community
around it, was key to <strong>the</strong> creation
of MXit. As a near-free alternative
to SMS, <strong>the</strong> platform’s ascent was
viral. Driven by word of mouth,
tactical marketing and on-<strong>the</strong>ground
activation campaigns, user
registrations reached 160,000 in <strong>the</strong>
first 12 months and 2.4 million by
<strong>the</strong> end of 2006.
Yet beyond serving as a mechanism
for communication, <strong>the</strong> platform
has developed into something far
greater: an inclusive community
of over 39 million registered users,
with an active user base bigger than
<strong>the</strong> size of Facebook’s in Africa.
The journey from <strong>the</strong> Stellenboschbased
tech start-up to becoming
<strong>the</strong> leading social network in Africa
was not without setbacks. The initial
project was dubbed Alaya, a mobile
multiplayer game. It failed due
to <strong>the</strong> high cost of SMSes, forcing
Heunis and his team of developers
back to <strong>the</strong> drawing board. They
learned how to bend <strong>the</strong> initial
gaming concept into what was
probably <strong>the</strong> first free mobilespecific
instant messenger service
in Africa.
“The idea for MXit
(pronounced Mix
it) was born out
of Namibian tech
entrepreneur
Herman Heunis’
belief that text-based
communication could
— and should — be
more affordable to
<strong>the</strong> masses.”
In <strong>the</strong> days before tech venture
capital came knocking voluntarily,
monetising <strong>the</strong> offering was <strong>the</strong>
next critical challenge. Beating
<strong>the</strong> clock by a few slim weeks, <strong>the</strong>
company launched paid-for chat
rooms, effectively solving a riddle
that had seen many would-be
competitors around <strong>the</strong> world fail