My September 2004 letter to Cyril Ramaphosa, then Chairman of MTN (current Deputy President of South Africa)

I am publishing this letter publicly in its entirety because I feel that the contents are still relevant today. I am about to publish a post about a legal matter my company has against MTN Cameroon and I have therefore been going through some archives. This letter in particular captured some of the sentiment I had over a decade ago. It was never answered.

October 14, 2004

Mr Cyril Ramaphosa

Chairman

MTN Group

Johannesburg, South Africa

By Fax: …..

Dear Mr. Ramaphosa,

As a young university student in the US in the 1980s, I was moved by the horror of Apartheid. So strong was my conviction of the injustice that I joined the Free South Africa Movement. Nelson Mandela was in prison; Ronald Reagan was in power. Do you remember those days? I do. We were on the same side then.

It was in the spring of 1985, during one of my many demonstrations in front of the South African Embassy in Washington, DC, joined in arms with about 10 others, singing “We Shall Overcome.” The police told us we were too close to the Embassy; we sang louder and got closer; the police threatened to arrest us; we sang even louder and got even closer. Somehow, the closer we got, the louder we sang, the closer we felt to you, our brothers and sisters who were living the injustice first hand. When we were arrested, we knew it was for the right cause.

Fast forward to 1999. Apartheid is over. A black man is President of South Africa; oh yes, we had overcome. As we all savored the political victory, the struggle was now for economic power. Former South African activists were making strides in the business arena. We were on a different continent but shared the same vision: Black economic empowerment. What an example you were for us. If you could make it, so could we. So with just a little money and a big dream, I started AppsTech, a software company. Three years later, AppsTech had offices on three continents and employed over 100 people, mostly Africans. Newspapers and magazines all over the world lauded our success. We had overcome the odds. We epitomized the “American Dream.”

From the beginning we wanted to give back and started a non-profit organization called the Africa Technology Forum to promote technology on the continent. Since 2000, we have poured over $1 million of our own money into that organization.

AppsTech has provided enterprise software solutions to clients in over 20 countries. As a native of Cameroon, I opened an office there and was anxious to demonstrate that we could do in Africa what we had done in other parts of the world. Imagine our joy when early 2002 we received a request for proposal from MTN Cameroon for a complete enterprise management software system. The competition was fierce as much larger multinationals fought for the project; but after almost six months of intense due diligence, the announcement came: AppsTech had won. MTN was the perfect client, we thought; a Black Empowerment company. We had come full circle. We could stand again, hand in hand, supporting each other.

We did not realize yet that winning that project was the beginning of the end of our American dream and the start of our African nightmare. Never had we encountered such racism, such spitefulness, such disrespect. While we thought we knew and understood what Apartheid had been about, it was in the hands of MTN that we experienced it first hand. Apparently finding no qualified Cameroonian or Black African to manage the project, MTN had to bring in white contractors from South Africa. The AppsTech team was made up almost entirely of Black Africans. You can certainly imagine the rest of the story.

Racist insults like “stupid monkeys,” or “even my pet lizard would not be so stupid” elicited not a single reaction from MTN management. After all, they were “giving us” so much money, how dared we complain? It did not matter what the contract said: MTN would pay what it felt like when it felt like it, would recruit our staff when and if it felt like it, would take as long as it felt like on the project, would breach as many contract provisions and agreements as it felt like, would reply to our letters when and if it felt like it. The entire AppsTech team sat in disbelief. The harder we worked, the more we overcame the obstacles MTN threw our way, the worse MTN would treat us. The conditions AppsTech worked under were unimaginable in this day and age but only strengthened our resolve. One of our team members sent an email that sent shivers through my spine: “Now I understand why Mandela fought so hard,” she said.

That email took me back to the 1980s. Was this what we had been fighting for? For South Africans to do outside of South Africa what was now outlawed in their own country?

The worst was yet to come. We could surmount the insults and the psychological pressures through our sheer determination and solidarity; but when MTN Cameroon withheld over $3 million in payments for no valid reason, how were we to overcome that? So I wrote and wrote and wrote. Surely, if MTN management in South Africa heard our story, they too would be outraged and they would immediately see the injustice and right the wrong. Despite all my letters, all my emails, all my faxes over several months, it was only this past Monday that I received a reply from MTN in South Africa, telling us to go back to MTN Cameroon, the very same people we have been complaining about, to work out an arrangement. This after two court ordered conciliation attempts with MTN Cameroon failed and after MTN Cameroon has made no effort to find an amicable solution.

So while AppsTech waits for MTN to pay its bills, we cannot meet our own financial obligations and we die a slow and painful death. My cries to my Black brothers and sisters in MTN management are met with complete silence.

Is Black Empowerment reserved for Black South Africans? Is racism alright as long as it is not to South Africans? Is injustice acceptable as long as it yields greater profits?

No amount of money will ever repair the damage that has been done to AppsTech by MTN. It has not only destroyed us financially but it has killed the dreams and aspirations of so many other young Africans for whom AppsTech too was an example.

It would be presumptuous of me to tell you what to do as Chairman of the MTN Group. You have probably heard it all before. It cannot hurt to hear it again: It was never about money, it was about empowerment. Please don’t turn your back on what we all fought for.

As AppsTech is a US Company, I have written to US Government authorities, as well as to the South African Ambassador to the US. Please understand that I had to take these steps because all my pleas to MTN have been for naught. No one in MTN management can claim that they did not know. They have all just sat back and watched as AppsTech is slowly, but surely destroyed.

I have always believed that people who have experienced injustice have a greater sensibility and find a greater need to fight so that others are not subject to it. It is that sensibility that I am appealing to. Please do not sit back and allow this injustice to continue.

I have attached my letter to your Ambassador to the US, as well as other relevant correspondence. I am currently in Cameroon and have included my contact information below.

Respectfully,

Rebecca Enonchong

Chief Executive Officer

AppsTech Group

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Update Oct. 24, 2016: Since this letter was written, a lot has happened. We have been able to rebuild the company, although we are nowhere near where we were when this all happened, and very far from where we would have been had MTN not tried to destroy us. We eventually won the procedure in court on the unpaid invoices and settled the separate claim we had made for damages, related to all the other contract breaches. We have unfortunately not yet been able to collect on the judgment but we are continuing to try to enforce it.