Mail & Guardian publisher Trevor Ncube has scotched rumours that Tokyo Sexwale’s Mvelaphanda Group (Mvela) is planning to buy a 30% stake in the newspaper. He said that the company is in talks with a number of people, but at this stage, a deal is not on the cards.
The Sunday Times‘s Business Times reported on Sunday that Mvela was after a 30% stake. Mvela’s spokesperson Chris Vick declined to comment on the ”deal”.
Ncube told the Mail & Guardian Online on Monday that he was flattered by the attention the company had received from the industry, which, he was convinced, was as a result of the paper’s turnaround strategy.
”Right now, we have not agreed on a deal to sell equity in the M&G,” he said, adding that the newspaper’s management is in discussions with a number of players, and that these talks have been ”preliminary and exploratory”.
”In all our discussions, at the top of our minds is the importance of editorial independence,” he said. ”Editorial independece is our currency, and we are not about to devalue it.”
Ncube took over as publisher of the loss-making M&G Media in July 2002 and has since turned it into a profitable publishing company, by growing advertising revenue and ”going back to basics” to produce a newspaper of the highest quality in the market.
Mvelaphanda recently secured a R1,4-billion stake in Johnnic Communications, which owns the Sunday Times, with fund manager Allan Gray.
Koni Media Holdings, which is partly owned by Department of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa, presidential political adviser Titus Mafolo and former chief of protocol Billy Modise, is also keen on securing a Johncom stake.
‘Why do we create these scarecrows?’
Meanwhile, President Thabo Mbeki has denied that the government is behind the Koni deal.
”Why do we create these scarecrows; and suddenly, big headlines about something that doesn’t exist?” Mbeki asked at a press conference after a three-day meeting of the International Investment Council in George. ”It’s unreal. It’s not real. It doesn’t exist,” he said.
Koni announced last Saturday that it had made a R7-billion offer to buy 100% of Johncom, hoping to raise the money through the Public Investment Corporation. However, later in the week Johncom told the South African Broadcasting Corporation it had received no binding, unconditional offer.
Mbeki said the critics would find that Mamoepa, Mafolo and Modise owned 1% of Koni and that it was not illegal for them to own shares in a public company as long as these were disclosed.
”The figures that have been mentioned about Johncom. Oh, I can guarantee you that these three don’t have R1-million — R1-million of these billions,” he said. ”They don’t have that money”. – Sapa, Mail & Guardian Online reporter