Thulani Khoza, a smartphone manufacturer, grew up hungry with no parents and was sexually abused. He endured it all to build his own company, Thules Telecoms.
Soon after he was born, in the east of Johannesburg, his parents abandoned him. This cruel twist of fate saw Khoza move to Bushbuckridge, a small poor town in Mpumalanga, to stay with his grandmother.
“Growing up was hard. I would walk to school and back by foot. On hot days I’d feel the heat on my feet and when it rained it poured on me. And when I get home I’d find that my aunts had only reserved food for their children,” says Khoza.
The odds were stacked against him and it was about to get worse. Khoza says a cousin raped him leaving physical and emotional scars.
“I have an operation on my manhood. It’s gets painful every winter season and it’s a reminder of what happened,” he says.
As if that was not enough, later that year, he survived two accidents; one put him in hospital for six months. Khoza was alone and cold in a world of suffering.
“It was a difficult time in my life, so much so that I tried to commit suicide five times.”
The scars on Khoza’s body tell the story of his anguish.
“I was burned by iron. I had hot water thrown over my body by family members,” says Khoza, as tears well up his eyes.
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The 30-year-old entrepreneur has a soft shaky voice but he is tough.
In those lean days his hunger for a better life kept him going. After completing matric, he moved back to Johannesburg to stay with a relative. But death was at the door; the cousin died. This left Khoza to fend for himself.
“After his death I felt lonely and I had no place to call home. So I ended up sleeping at church. The security guard would give me his jacket to use as a blanket.”
Khoza was not to be beaten.
His love for technology saw him take on a degree in computer science from the University of the Witwatersrand. Here, he also slept in lecture halls.
“I would wake up at 4AM so that other students would not see that I was sleeping in the class,” he says.
Khoza had to rely on others to pay for his fees. His church raised money to cover his first year and a bursary from MTN allowed him to complete his degree.
Surviving was not easy but he somehow managed to.
While studying, Khoza would fix people’s computers and laptops to earn extra money and his love for technology grew.
He followed his degree up with a couple of post-graduate degrees, including an Honors in Software Engineering from the University of Nottingham, in Britain, and a Master’s in business administration at Baker University in the United Sates.
Soon after completing his studies, Khoza was hired as a system analyst for South Africa’s public broadcaster, the SABC. He then left the broadcaster to join cell phone giant MTN.
“I became restless in spirit and mind,” he says.
Khoza wanted to be his own boss.
In 2008, he created his own Android-powered smartphone, which he says will boast greater security in the technology industry.
“It lets the user encode the phone. It makes the phone 99.9 percent secure,” says Khoza.
The app, exclusive to the phone for now, will help up-and-coming entrepreneurs connect with others around the world and those already established, all via an electronic forum.
Thules Telecoms has 89 employees and has received orders from as far as the United States, Britain, Mexico, Portugal, and Ghana.
“People used to look at me like I was nothing, and because of that I told myself that one day I was going to be great and get the treatment that I deserve. Yes, I suffered in life, but I decided not to live my life in anger and bitterness because it can destroy you.”
“I’ve come to realize the fact that my parents abandoned me, they don’t owe me anything. Nobody owes me anything. I’m in charge of my own happiness,” says Khoza.
Despite the lemons that life throws at him, Khoza is able to make lemonade.

Triumph That Came After  The Tears

It was a touching story, even inspiring; the sad part, most of it wasn’t true.
Thirty-year-old Thulani Khoza told FORBES AFRICA, plus a clutch of television shows, radio and national newspapers, his plausible story of building a smartphone in Africa. He even had a snappy name for it, T-Touch Mobile. His former partner alleged that he bought the phone at a shop in downtown Johannesburg.
At our offices in Sandton, Khoza said he would be on the cover of FORBES AFRICA one day.
Khoza told us of his transition from Bushbuckridge, a small town in Mpumalanga, to obtaining a degree in computer science from the University of the Witwatersrand in 2006 and earning honors in software engineering from the University of Nottingham, in Britain, and a master’s in business administration at Baker University in the United Sates.
“The university can find no record on its database of a Mr Thulani Khoza having graduated from the university with a BSc degree in 2006,”says Carol Crosley, the Registrar at the University of the Witwatersrand.
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Emma Rayner, a Media Relations Manager at the University of Nottingham, said: “I can confirm that our alumni team and our student services department can find no record of Thulani Khoza ever being a student at the University of Nottingham.”
Khoza said he worked as a systems analyst for South Africa’s public broadcaster, the SABC. But the SABC’s human resources confirmed it doesn’t have a Thulani Khoza in its records as an employee or even a freelancer.
In his company profile Khoza claims to have registered with Neotel, a national operator for fixed-line telecommunication services.
“Neotel is unaware of, and cannot locate, any records relating to Thulani Khoza or the company, Thules Communications,” says Sandra Sowray of Neotel.
It also appears that Thules Telecoms, a company Khoza claims to be his, belongs to his ex-girlfriend Beatrice Mashego who grew up with him.
“We attended the same primary school in Bushbuckridge Shatale Township. In 1998, we were doing grade six, he left to stay with his mother in Vosloorus until he invited me on Facebook in November 2015.”
According to Mashego, the company was registered in September 2016, under her name, but no more.
“It was registered under my name until I approached the CIPC (Companies and Intellectual Property Commission) to deregister after hearing that he used me to get government funds.”
Mashego says the company wasn’t registered with any trademark association.
“I am not sure if the phone is there or not but I can confirm that there are no technicians whatsoever. I only know the one phone he’s been showing everyone.”
Khoza told us that he has 89 employees and has received orders from as far as the United States, Britain, Mexico, Portugal, and Ghana. His former business partner, Karabo Masenyadiloana, says no.
“He’s been promising jobs; that once this factory is up and running he’s going to employ 2,500 people. Thulani is too calculated to be mentally sick because someone who is mentally sick would have dropped the ball but this guy is always on his game. It is deliberate,” says Masenyadiloana.
According to Masenyadiloana, there is no such thing as T-Touch Mobile that was supposed to be registered with the regulator, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA).
“I was submitting paperwork for my phone at ICASA, so I was having a conversation with the staff so I was like, ‘have you guys ever heard of T-Touch?’ They searched their system and there was no record of T-Touch. I then asked about Thulani Khoza, they searched again and there was no Thulani Khoza in their system. This guy doesn’t even know where ICASA is and what the paperwork looks like,” says Masenyadiloana.
“Thulani’s phone is cracked, don’t you think that if he really had a phone company he would have fixed that crack or got himself a new phone? &#8230;For him to go to a shop and buy a phone and tell media that he manufactured it himself shows that he has a skill in lying,” he says.
In November, Khoza received the government’s SA Man of the Year for Science &amp; Technology award that &#8220;acknowledges an individual that has played a significant role in ensuring community development in science and technology&#8221;. Khoza was going to be handed a R15,000 ($1,100) cash prize, but not anymore.
“He did lie to us. We withdrew the award in December as he failed to come forward to explain himself. We have also decided not to act in a way that would destroy him but to rehabilitate him,” says Bongani Ngomane, Chairman of the awards.
When FORBES AFRICA called Khoza on January 12, he said: “I’m in Mpumalanga and I cannot respond to your questions right now because you’ve caught me off guard. I will ask my PR company to send a statement and I have addressed everything in the statement.”
We phoned him repeatedly and, at the time of going to press, nothing, not a call nor a statement.

Tag: Thulani Khoza

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