Sometimes things need to be built and sometimes, they need to be broken down to understand their purpose, their limits, or their failure points. BC Technologies’ head of technology Dionne Swart shares the early lessons that shaped him, and how those moments taught him to lead, to learn and to build teams differently.
When most kids were in absolute wonder staring at entertainment playing out on television screens, Dionne Swart was at work investigating what was behind the screen. “I was the kid who plugged in the VCR, set up the new TV and wanted to see how everything actually worked,” he says.
“By 10 years old, I had broken and reloaded my dad’s old ICL ELF 8088 several times. By 11, with my parents’ help, I registered a business called Compu Dee Computers and started fixing PCs for adults who had no idea what to do when they broke,” he says, explaining just how early his passion for technology began.
“I learnt faster by breaking things,” he says. Long before his role as head of technology for BC Technologies, his instinct to learn by figuring things out for himself was the thread that shaped every step of Dionne’s career.
Dionne attended George Campbell Technical High School in Durban, then went on to technical college and DUT, learning electronics and light-current engineering when science pathways were mainstream but mostly out of reach in South Africa.
It was first in high school where he began experimenting to understand how computer networks worked with a small group of like-minded tech enthusiasts. “This was before the internet was mainstream here: we would dial up into bulletin boards to download mail and newsletters to learn how this new method of communication worked. Later at DUT, when dial-up became more available I was online every evening and most weekends. I partnered with a small group of tech enthusiasts: we coded graphics demos, early game-type stuff and generally taught ourselves how programming and networks functioned.”
Dionne snagged his first job as a communications technician while still studying. “They noticed my interest in IT and sent me on early Windows 2000 networking courses. I built and ran their first networks for about two years. That was the official start,” he explains.
This quickly turned into building and managing the business’s first internal networks: “They saw I wasn’t scared of learning. I just wanted to understand the why and how of everything,” he says.
The structure of leadership
Years later, Dionne learnt that it is not only the structure of technology that is important but the foundation of leadership too. Bravely having built multiple companies of his own, Dionne had to shut them down. “I closed several of my businesses after bringing in additional directors.
We’d grown well over several years, then I started letting go of certain parts and things fell apart. That failure shook me and made me question whether I should lead a business. I’m not naturally the finance guy.”
This questioning did not lead to downfall however, and Dionne committed to strengthening his business and leadership acumen. “Coming back from losing everything was humbling. Since 2018 I’ve been rebuilding the foundations. It changed me for the better.”
That failure marked him just as much as the childhood tinkering did. “You question everything – your ability, your leadership, if you should be doing this at all.” It is the reason Dionne is now completing an MBA, to strengthen the commercial dimension and not rely only on technical instinct. “I want to understand the business side deeply. Not just how to build things but why the business needs it.”
These incremental steps have led Dionne to his role as head of technology at BC Technologies. The South African enterprise technology firm delivers next-generation SD-WAN, infrastructure-as-a-service, backup, networking, private/public cloud solutions and cybersecurity (through its Securelytics team) to large retail and enterprise environments.
It has grown from around five people when Dionne first joined, to close to a hundred. He now sets the technology direction and oversees stack decisions across multiple teams.
Dionne describes the leadership style that shaped his path at BC Technologies as simply leading from the front while not taking the tools out of people’s hands. “If the team is burning on a weekend, I’ll get on the call. But I don’t fix everything for them. You learn from failure. If I remove those learning moments, they never build depth.”
Moving successfully into the future
Dionne believes this learning is just as critical in understanding and evaluating new technology, something he does through three filters: readiness, relevance and resilience. Nowhere is this more important to him than with AI. “AI must serve us, not replace us,” he says. “If we don’t implement AI responsibly now, we’ll feel the impact in two years.
“AI is still not quite mature, but it does have a lot of capability and it’s not going away, so we have to modernise for it. I like to pilot small use cases and then bring that innovation into production in a structured way. Responsible integration is key for me. It’s brilliant for automating repetitive tasks, like writing the same letter fifty times, but you still need to verify what it produces.”
“These LLMs make things up if they don’t know. If you don’t know how to validate it, you will propose things to a customer that simply aren’t real, and that’s a contract and reputation risk. Responsible AI isn’t only about technology. It’s governance, education and protecting customer information,” he says.
Passing on the baton
This balanced wisdom informs Dionne’s leadership style too and mentoring is part of his mission at BC Technologies, personally mentoring interns and junior engineers when he recognises an early spark in them. “I enjoy mentoring people. When I see potential in someone, I like to take them under my wing and help guide them to that next level. The challenge in South Africa isn’t only retention, it’s sourcing senior talent in the first place. Once you’ve got someone in a good culture and connected to the purpose, they’ll usually stay. I believe strongly in investing early and building that talent pipeline to develop and grow people from inside.”
While Dionne’s commitment to tech and mentoring is his key motivator, when it’s time to wind down, surprisingly, he chooses to be as far away from screens as possible. “I actually enjoy the outdoors a lot, despite being such a tech head. People often assume I sit behind a screen all day and night and yes, sometimes I do, but I like getting out into the mountains, hiking up into the Drakensberg, making a small fire out there and camping overnight. That’s my switch-off. Phone off. Silence.”
“The older I get, the more I want balance. My Boerboel’s best friend is a kitten, Kiara. Big dog, tiny kitten and they’re inseparable. Watching them, for me, that’s grounding. There’s more to life than dashboards and alerts,” he concludes.
