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From Megabytes to Millions: South Africa’s Best Paid Telecoms CEOs in 2025

Published

2 months ago

August 1, 2025

Chiraag

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In a country where the average household battles rising living costs and loadshedding woes, telecoms executives are raking in multimillion rand paycheques. At the top of the leaderboard? Vodacom’s Shameel Joosub, whose total package in the 2024/25 financial year hit a staggering R71.1 million.

Breaking Down the Numbers

Vodacom, South Africa’s most valuable telecoms firm, has had a stellar year in the markets. Its share price climbed nearly 30 percent, and shareholders have rewarded that performance handsomely. Joosub’s base salary stood at R18.43 million, but the real meat of his earnings came from incentives and dividends.

Short-term incentives (STIs), long-term incentives (LTIs), and share-related benefits padded his earnings by an additional R52.6 million before taxes. Of course, SARS took its share: about R32 million. Joosub’s take home? Roughly R39.1 million. Still, not too shabby for a man steering a ship through economic storms across the continent.

What makes his package unique isn’t just the amount, but how tightly it’s tied to performance. Joosub currently owns three times the minimum required Vodacom shares, meaning his earnings are directly linked to shareholder value.

MTN: Big Cuts and Boardroom Battles

Next on the list is MTN Group CEO Ralph Mupita, who saw his salary drop from R80.4 million to R64.8 million. While still an eye-watering amount, the 19 percent decline reflects both MTN’s underwhelming financial year and shareholder pushback.

Roughly 24 percent of shareholders voted against MTN’s executive remuneration policy, with over 40 percent rejecting the implementation report outright. These aren’t just symbolic gestures. In South Africa, more than 25 percent opposition means a policy doesn’t automatically pass. Clearly, not everyone is thrilled with the boardroom rewards.

MTN South Africa CEO Charles Molapisi also took a minor cut, going from R26.9 million to R26.3 million. Though less dramatic, it mirrors the group’s stock slump of nearly 19 percent over the financial year.

Telkom’s Rising Star

While others saw reductions, Telkom CEO Serame Taukobong enjoyed a significant bump. His remuneration jumped from R19.23 million to R33.29 million. That’s a 73 percent increase, making him the sector’s biggest climber.

Why the confidence? Under Taukobong, Telkom returned to profitability strong enough to declare its first dividend in five years. Analysts have praised his leadership as transformational, which makes his reward less controversial than others on the list.

Blue Label’s Leaner Paycheques Despite a Booming Stock

Meanwhile, at Blue Label Telecoms, the holding company for Cell C, co-CEOs Brett and Mark Levy both saw pay cuts, from R35.81 million each in 2023 to R20.84 million in 2024. Yet, the company’s performance has soared. Since September 2023, its share price has rocketed more than 400 percent, making it one of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange’s top performers.

According to analysts like Philip Short at Flagship Asset Management, the restructuring at Cell C could push the share price even higher. The fact that the Levy brothers earned less while the company gained value may be a strategic recalibration or simply optics in a shareholder-sensitive era.

Why It Matters

Telecoms are often seen as recession-proof in Africa, and for good reason. Demand for data, mobile services, and fintech continues to climb. But executive salaries, especially in the tens of millions, remain a hot-button issue in a country with deep socioeconomic divides.

These figures highlight how closely South Africa’s telecom CEOs are tied to share price movements and investor expectations. While many South Africans battle unreliable networks, high data costs, and economic uncertainty, the people at the top of these networks are being handsomely rewarded for performance, at least when the markets say so.

Whether you see it as just desserts or corporate excess, one thing’s for sure: in South Africa’s telecom industry, the numbers tell a story as fast-moving as the data flying across their networks.