Career Biography

Herman holds B. Comm (Law), LLB, and LLM (Corporate Law) degrees, as well as a Post-Graduate Diploma in the Drafting and Interpretation of Contracts. He has more than 16 years’ experience in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector. After practicing as an admitted attorney, he transitioned into the corporate world and has served as the General Counsel for Huawei Technologies in South Africa since 2022, after previously heading up the company’s Legal Department for 10 years. He has a proven track record of successfully managing the legal and company secretarial functions for the company, as well as advising on various large-scale ICT projects. He also sits on the Company’s Social and Ethics Committee and his specialist areas include Corporate Law, Commercial Contracts, Legal Risk and Strategy Management, and Dispute Management.  

What are the most significant cases, projects and/or transactions that you and/or your legal team have recently been involved in?

Huawei’s operations in South Africa cover a significant portion of the ICT landscape. The business units and groups serviced by the legal department include the Carrier and Network, Enterprise, Digital Power, and Huawei Cloud business groups, each with its own individual challenges. The South African legal department also provides support to the Contract and Fulfilment, Delivery and Service, Human Resources, Administration, Procurement, EHS, Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment, and Finance departments.

As such, the legal department plays a vital role in the daily operations of the company in South Africa. In addition to providing day-to-day risk mitigation, advisory services, and support to the aforementioned business groups and departments, a significant amount of time is spent on ensuring good corporate governance and compliance. The legal team also plays a critical role in negotiating and advising on various agreements, complex transactions, and novel business solutions that the business departments offer to our partners and customers in the Republic.

The Huawei legal team in South Africa, under my guidance, contributes significantly to the company’s ability to successfully navigate the often challenging and dynamic business environment in South Africa

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crisis to ensure the organisation’s resilience?   

Being the calming voice in the room, especially as the general counsel of the Company, is of vital importance in times of crisis. It not only prevents rash decision making and inadvertently increasing the risk, but also instils confidence and can “reduce the temperature” to allow for objective decision making. This approach further allows the legal function to clearly and objectively evaluate the situation, which in turn leads to considered advise to the decision makers on the underlying risk associated with the crisis at hand.

With this in mind, strategic external legal resources who understand the company’s operations and the needs of their client, can also be of great assistance and importance, as it strengthens the internal legal function’s ability to guide, advise and support the business during times of crisis.

Having clear decision making channels and tested crisis-management guidelines/policies in place, that identifies the applicable roles and responsibilities, further reduces the impact of unforeseen events, provides structure and resilience to the process  and allows the company’s management team to access the right information at the right time to ensure informed decision making.

What strategies do you employ to ensure the successful digital transformation of a legal department while maintaining compliance with your country’s data protection laws? 

Artificial Intelligence based solutions are fast becoming ubiquitous. Therefore clear in-house guidelines on the use of AI are critical to ensure individuals and companies’ information are protected. Although we do not foresee a situation in the near future where technology will replace experienced legal professionals, AI solutions that assist with contract reviews, sourcing or collating legal opinions, and case law are rapidly becoming a part of our daily workflows. From a data protection standpoint, whether using traditional or technology-based automated processes, it is crucial to ensure that the appropriate cybersecurity protections and compliance measures are embedded in business processes to guarantee consistent implementation across all company operations. The strategy, therefore, is to stay abreast of technological advancements and solutions, implementing those that can enhance the efficiency of in-house counsels and reduce time spent on routine tasks, while ensuring quality and vetted outputs, resulting from data protection compliant inputs. 

  AI has been taken seriously as a potentially revolutionary technological change in the legal world for a number of years now. Has it had a meaningful impact in how your legal team works in this time?

As alluded to above, the use of AI, in its current form, needs to be approached with some caution. Hallucinations, although having reduced with the newer iterations of the models, are unfortunately still a risk and it is therefore vital to make use of the AI model as you would a junior research assistant / paralegal, rather than relying on it as having been received from a seasoned legal professional.  It has definitely reduced time spent on research and general reviews but still requires a human to double check and protect against incorrect, false or inaccurate outputs. We are however seeing constant and fast improvement in this regard and look forward to it further reducing time spent on menial, time-consuming tasks.