---

This is a story of how Hanley Nyathi (44) started his venture into ICT by roaming the streets of Johannesburg. Today, his company offers products and service to big corporates and he has his own laptop brand.

---

Sizwe sama Yende

---

Hanley Nyathi (44), naughtily, left a warm rural Limpopo home at age 11 to the streets of Johannesburg just because he heard there were plenty of TV games to play.

Thirty-three years later, Nyathi is a prosperous information communication technology (ICT) entrepreneur with his own laptop brand going by the eponym - Hanley Laptops. It is probably the first laptop brand designed by a black South African, and one of a few designed locally like Mecer and Proline.

Nyathi’s departure to the city of lights is an antithesis of a usual rags to riches story of an abandoned homeless street kid who turned his life around.

He left Makotopong village near Polokwane on his own after a boy from Rosebank, a city slicker who was a few years older than him, introduced him to TV games.

WATCH: The IT guru made by the streets

Nyathi told The People’s Eye from his offices in Midrand that the boy used to visit Makotopong twice a year during school holidays and he had a TV game.

In the village, Nyathi and his peers only played football on dusty fields and knew nothing about TV games.

“The guy asked me: Hanley do you know something called a TV game? Then I started asking myself what he was talking about because there's no TV game in this area. He then explained to me how to play TV games and how to connect it,” he said.

“He even gave me the names of those TV games that you play. I remember very well he gave me Super Mario ,Pac-Man, Mortal Kombat and FIFA. So,  this guy was talking English proper English - he even called me dude."

From there, Nyathi’s imagination went wild. He dreamed playing the game every day.

 “When I  was sleeping at night I would play.  I would even tell him when he comes in June that I'm now in stage 10. He told me, Hanley you just imagining things,” he said.

Nyathi said that when he played the game for the first time, after his friend brought the game to the village, he even beat him. What struck him the most was when the friend typed his name – Hanley – which was the first time he had seen his name on a computer.

While in the streets, his parents searched for him until they gave up. Nyathi said his mother subsequently found solace to deal with his disappearance by becoming a staunch Christian. In Makotopong, he stayed with his grandmother but his parents were in Soweto.  

Nyathi returned home in Soweto after two years. In those two years on the streets, he spent every night playing TV games at shops near Wits University. It was an ideal place, he said, because students would leave coins that he would use to satisfy his big hunger for playing.

“I became sick when I returned home. I had asthma and would collapse every now and then,” Nyathi said. That affected his schooling and he did not reach Grade 12.

He then studied his N1, N2 and N3 and thereafter went to a computer college in Durban where he studied ICT. Nyathi attended university in Cape Town.

After completing his university, Nyathi upset his parents when he refused to apply for a job and even rejected a job opportunity his father had found for him. His mind was fixated on having his own ICT company.

“No one believed in me.  I remember I called my mother and my father and sat them down. They told me straight away that we we're not going to support you. We believe you need to go and work first then we'll support you.”

His father decided to give him a house to work from and the business struggled to a point that his peers were laughing at him for having no money. Nyathi’s brother offered to support him to start an internet café, but he still turned down that offer.

“So, there I was irritating everybody because my life was not going well. I keep talking big things.  Everybody got tired with me. I stayed with my cousin, I stayed with my mother and I stayed with my aunt,” he said.

Then in 2003, Nyathi had a big fight with his father for refusing a job he had found for him.  Nyathi went to the streets again.

One day he overheard a man talking on his cellphone complaining about a problem with his server. Nyathi took the pluck and approached him.

“I went to him. He's still my client today.  I said: I can assist you with that challenge that you have." Nyathi was shabbily dressed and the potential client doubted him.

“I said: Give me that chance you'll see. The guy went to his office upstairs and then he came back. I think he was desperate.  He then called me. I went upstairs. When I got there there were many computers and I fixed those computers for three days,” he said.

Nyathi said that he called his cousin to assist him.

“The guy was happy and the the following Monday he asked how much I wanted. I said he must give me any amount that he wanted.  He gave me R50 000 and that was my breakthrough,” he said.

The client offered him an office to do his business and he never looked back. Big clients started knocking on his door, but in 2010, the streets came calling again. Nyathi decided to shut down everything and go to Egypt, Barcelona and China to learn more about the ICT industry.

Nyathi came back, more wiser, and began building Hanley Technologies, which is now a force to be reckoned with.

“These laptops are going to Zambia,” he told The People’s Eye as he showed us his warehouse with boxes full of Hanley laptops.

Hanley Technologies provides technological strategies products and services to more than 15 industries which include medical, automobile, media, banking insurance, manufacturing and energy. The company also specialises in consumer computing products and manufacturing and assembling of digital products.

---