‘Former consultant to the ANC newspaper project Moeletsi Mbeki argues that the ANC did not welcome Tony O’Reilly into South Africa to monopolise the English-language media
AS one of the people who have been intimately involved in the African National Congress’ efforts to create diversity in our country’s mass media, I welcome Bruce Cohen’s contribution (“The Monopoly Is The Message”, Mail & Guardian December 1 to 7 1995). I completely agree with Cohen that what’s at issue is not the colour of the owners but rather the extent of monopoly or concentration of ownership.
Where I disagree with Cohen is his submission that the ANC aided and abetted Tony O’Reilly and Nthato Motlana to consolidate the Independent group’s stranglehold over the country’s English-language print media.
It may come as a surprise to Cohen that far from the ANC giving a “tumultuous welcome” to Motlana’s acquisition of the Sowetan, it actually opposed the acquisition on two grounds. Firstly, the acquisition was conditional on Motlana selling off shares allocated to black business in cellular phone company MTN to a white company, Argus.
Secondly, the ANC opposed the deal for precisely the reason Cohen raised, which was that the management contract demanded by the Argus meant Motlana was not an effective new owner but rather a front figure created to give an impression of change where there was none.
Cohen writes: “It was the ANC that welcomed Tony O’Reilly into the country to grab from Anglo, at a price that defied logic, the assets of Argus newspapers and then to allow the baked bean king to consolidate his position so that he now holds a total monopoly of the English-language daily newspaper market in Cape Town and Durban in addition to his control over the Gauteng market.”
This wonderfully colourful and sweeping generalisation of Cohen’s bears only passing resemblance to what actually happened.
l It was the Anglo American Corporation that invited the baked bean king to grab Argus.
l It was Anglo that fixed the price at which Argus was sold to O’Reilly.
l Yes, O’Reilly did ask the ANC for an endorsement of his acquisition of Argus and it is true that this was given, but this was on conditions that were made public in a letter by Noel Coburn, then an Argus director, which went with the pre-listing statement and was published in The Star June 9 1994.
This qualification pointed out the ANC’s objectives on the media as outlined in the Reconstruction and Development Programme.
l Numerous private discussions between O’Reilly and his representatives, and the ANC and its advisers took place after the Independent group bought a 35 percent stake in the Argus in early 1994, in an effort to get O’Reilly to agree to black shareholding and black advancement, all to no avail. At the end of 1994 O’Reilly broke off contact with the ANC’s Department of Information and Publicity and has subsequently raised his shareholding in the Argus to 58 percent.
That was the past. What about the future?
At least in the print media, the monopolists are getting weaker while the pro-media diversity forces are getting stronger. When Anglo controlled the Argus we were up against a real heavyweight. The upstart monopolists, O’Reilly and Motlana, do not have anything like the resources and influence of Anglo.
True, Anglo still controls TML, but our home- grown giant is in such a state of mental confusion trying to come to terms with life in a new South Africa — witness, for example, the hilarious antics played out by Anglo over JCI unbundling — that psychiatric help would be a more fruitful way of restoring Anglo’s balance than the big stick Cohen seems to want the government to wield to deal with the TML issue.
For the way forward, I suggest that, instead of the pro-media diversity camp wasting its energies trading insults and accusations as Cohen does in his article, we should ensure that the resolutions passed at the Conference of Communicators organised by Deputy President Thabo Mbeki’s office at Arniston in August are
These resolutions called on the government to urgently set up mechanisms to investigate media issues such as limitations on foreign ownership of print media, ownership and control of media and the formulation of criteria and mechanisms to test the implementation of affirmative action in the print media.