South African communities deserve better than WhatsApp and a printed register.
tribe.one is built by people who've sat on body corporates, run street committees, and watched their own trustees burn out. We're building the tool we wished we had.
The story
In late 2024, our founder Thabo was treasurer of his estate's body corporate. He spent his evenings reconciling levies in a shared spreadsheet, his Sundays answering the same 20 questions on WhatsApp, and his weekends explaining why the gate motor procurement needed three quotes.
When he asked around, every other treasurer he met had the same story. tribe.one exists to give every South African community a single, accountable, POPIA-aligned place to organise themselves — in ZAR, in en-ZA, on infrastructure that lives in af-south-1.
The principles we won't compromise on.
Tenant data stays with the tenant
Three-layer isolation, append-only audit, one-click export. Your community's data is yours — not ours to monetise.
Money truth, not money guesses
Double-entry ledger. bigint cents. Immutable entries. Approvals over thresholds. Treasurers shouldn't hold this together with prayer.
Audit everything, hide nothing
Every action is logged with actor, time, before/after. Compliance and trust are not bolted on later — they're the foundation.
Mobile-first, low-data
Most South African communities run from phones, often on capped data. tribe.one is built for that — not for a fibre desk in Cape Town.
Honest pricing, in ZAR
No per-resident gotchas, no surprise overages, no platform fees on community money. Free tier exists forever.
Quiet by default
Notifications are an opt-in unless they're emergencies. We don't optimise for engagement; we optimise for not waking people up.
Small, opinionated, in Johannesburg.
Thabo Makhobotloane
Founder & CEO
Nomsa Mthembu
CTO
Johan v.d. Merwe
Head of Onboarding
Lerato Mokoena
Design Lead
Sipho Phakathi
Engineering
Aisha Khan
Security & POPIA
Pieter Naidoo
Customer Success
We're hiring
Engineering, design, success
Two and a bit years, eleven modules.
Idea born
Thabo's body corp spreadsheet hits 23 tabs. He decides to build a tool instead.
First prototype
Three modules — messaging, voting, treasury. Greenside Estate runs its first trial vote.
Six modules live
Trade, projects, and protection added. Three estates onboarded.
Federated admin
Ward councillors begin onboarding. Notifications + analytics modules ship.
All eleven modules
Super Admin platform ships. 14 estates, 3,820 active residents, R 4.1m levies processed.
Open beta · municipal layer
Three Joburg wards, two Cape Town municipalities testing federated oversight. Public launch later this year.
Want to help us build it?
Whether you're a community looking to onboard or an engineer who wants to work on civic software in ZAR, we'd love to hear from you.