Andile Ngcaba, a former director of Dimension Data, has filed a R430 million lawsuit against the company alleging racial discrimination and unfair pay. Ngcaba claims he was excluded from long-term incentive schemes that benefited mostly white executives and that the company failed to pay him equally to other senior leaders. He previously lost an arbitration case in 2017 and is now taking Dimension Data to court, seeking unpaid bonuses of R261 million or R170 million in damages for racial discrimination. Dimension Data is also facing a separate legal issue regarding data loss with an internet provider.

1. Andile Ngcaba takes NTT-subsidiary Dimension Data to
High Court over racial prejudice case

2. • Activist-turned-businessman Andile Ngcaba has filed an R430m civil
lawsuit against his former organisation Dimension Data, alleging
racial discrimination and unfair remuneration practices.

3. • Andile Ngcaba was working with Dimension Data as Director-General
from 2004 to 2017. Before his career in the technology sector, Ngcaba
was an activist aligned with the African National Congress during the
struggle against apartheid, and thereafter the Director-General of
Communications in the first democratically elected government of
South Africa in 1994.
•

4. • Ngcaba alleged that he learned in May 2016 that he had been
excluded from a long-term incentive scheme which was benefitting
other executive directors who were mostly white. He further alleged
that Dimension Data, its chairman Jeremy Ord and parent company
Japan’s NTT had backed out of an undertaking to pay him equally or
higher than these senior leaders of the company. He argued that this
amounted to institutional racism.

5. • Ngcaba had previously lost the legal battle with Dimension Data in
2017 at the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration.
Now, he has sued the company at the Johannesburg High Court and is
claiming R261.3-million in unpaid bonuses. Alternatively, he wants
the court to order Dimension Data to pay him about R170-million in
damages for allegedly discriminating against him on the “grounds of
race, social origin and/or other arbitrary ground” and a further R10
million for racial insults and slurs.
•

6. • Dimension Data has been embroiled in another legal complication
with the internet provider iSAT over data loss earlier this year.

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