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Image: Supplied
The fight between GovChat vs WhatsApp (Meta) will be discussed in Cape Town during the book launch of 'The Silicon Empire vs Social Impact: The David & Goliath Battle by Eldrid Jordaan on September 15.
In the early months of 2020, when the world stopped moving, South Africa faced a challenge that was as immediate as it was overwhelming: how to get help, quickly and directly, to the people who needed it most.
Social grants, the lifeline for millions, were suddenly inaccessible in the usual way.
The problem wasn’t money or even policy. The problem was logistics. How do you keep people safe and at the same time put food on their tables?
Enter Eldrid Jordaan. Jordaan wasn’t a politician, nor was he a Silicon Valley wunderkind.
He was a connector, someone who believed technology could be made humble enough to serve ordinary people.
His platform, "GovChat", was an elegant solution to a complex problem: take an interface that almost everyone in South Africa already used, WhatsApp and turn it into a channel for government services. No new app.
No steep learning curve. Just a familiar green screen on a phone.
For a while, it worked brilliantly. Citizens registered. Government responded. A crisis was met with a kind of digital grace. But then, something unexpected happened.
WhatsApp’s parent company, Meta, stepped in, not to support, but to stop. At the height of a global emergency, GovChat was suddenly under threat of being shut down.
Why?
Why would a multibillion-dollar technology empire intervene to prevent its platform from being used to distribute government support?
The answer, like many answers in the world of technology, has less to do with what’s visible than what’s invisible: power, precedent, and control. I
f GovChat was allowed to thrive, what did that say about the boundaries of private infrastructure in public life?
This is where Jordaan’s story becomes something larger than just a South African tale. It’s about courage, not the cinematic kind, but the quieter, riskier kind. To stand against a company like Meta is to stand against the gravitational pull of global technology itself.
Jordaan did it not because he wanted to win, but because he believed something else was more important: that ordinary people deserved access, and that the tools of the digital age should serve societies, not the other way around.
That struggle, between a small civic-minded platform and one of the world’s most powerful corporations, is now the subject of a new book.
And fittingly, its discussion and launch will take place not in the polished halls of a conference centre, but at the book launch, which will be a gathering space for ideas, where difficult questions about power, technology, and courage can finally be asked aloud.
You are invited:
To confirm your attendance, please email Trishana: trishana.naicker@volt.africa
TIME: 17H00 FOR 17:30 - 19:00
DATE: 15 September 2025
VENUE: Workshop17 (V&A Waterfront)
Wesley Diphoko is a Technology Analyst and the Editor-In-Chief of FastCompany (SA) magazine.