In May this year, shortly after being named the AdReview Advertising Person of the Year, Groovin Nchabeleng told the Mail & Guardian that his company had hardly scratched the surface of the media space.
At the time, he was reluctant to go into detail about what he meant.
The past couple of weeks have prised open his little secret. He meant that he and his business partners at Koni Media wanted a stake in Johncom, owner of South Africa’s biggest newspaper, the Sunday Times.
Nchabeleng is rather surprised about the antipathy to the deal. ‘It’s a pure business transaction,†he says.
Those not convinced by his logic have pointed to the fact that Koni’s other shareholders (Billy Modise, Ronnie Mamoepa and Titus Mafolo) have close relations with the government and particularly with President Thabo Mbeki.
Nchabeleng thinks the opposition to his company being part of the deal is based on a lack of appreciation of the direction the global media space is taking and of his entrepreneurial spirit. Nchabeleng controls 70% of Koni with the rest divided equally between Modise, Mamoepa and Mofolo.
Koni controls Nchabeleng’s first company, Blue Print, which he started in 1999.
‘There is no way I am going to start a company from scratch again. People don’t know that I spent six months without a salary starting this company. My wife and children had to stay with my in-laws because I did not have money for food or petrol. I stayed in a house that didn’t have electricity, but I held on and believed, until we got our first major deal with the National Ports Authority. Where was politics at that time?â€
Nchabeleng points to the fact that he was 2006 Black Business Quarterly’s Entrepreneur of the Year and the deal to acquire advertising agency Leo Burnett (where he had started out as a junior account executive in 1995) being declared Deal of the Year is testimony to his business acumen rather than his political sympathies.
He says the media are filled with advertisers targeting consumers from when they wake up, to when they are driving in their cars, reading their morning paper, switching on their computers and logging on to the internet at work and watching TV in their living rooms on their return. This is where he, as an advertising man, wants a piece of the action.
‘South Africa is not immune to global trends. South Africans tend to think that the world is run from Cape Town to Johannesburg. It is not. We need to be part of the global village. What happens in the United Kingdom, the United States and Asia affects us as well.â€
He says the media are yet to tap adequately into Africa’s billion people and Koni, as a prominent media company, intends to do so.
‘We are in the media game. We are passionate about it. Whether the Johncom deals happens, the plan to offer an integrated media solution will be executed.â€
A threat to ourselves
The rise of the likes of Mvelaphanda (led by Tokyo Sexwale), Shanduka (Cyril Ramaphosa), Safika (Saki Macozoma) and a host of other new businesses shows how the post-1994 scene has provided the space for a merger between business and political elites, argues Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya.
It is difficult to imagine any significant BEE deal that would not include political role players.
So opposition to Koni buying into Johncom should imply opposition to any BEE formation doing the same.
It’s hard to share the apocalyptic view that a stake in Johncom will lead to closure of debating space in newspapers. And it is hard to imagine any lending institution or any business person sinking billions into an elaborate political campaign, while killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.
The argument about the SABC already being ‘bought off†without it losing advertising revenue does not hold. That medium has a more captive audience, whereas newspapers are a more competitive terrain. It is possible to have no option but to rely solely on the SABC (especially radio) for news, but one always has a choice about whether to part with one’s money to buy one or other newspaper.
If Johncom’s prospective new owners sacrifice the titles’ credibility, they do so at their own peril.
While media ownership is a fact of life, the greatest threat to media freedom lies in newsrooms. If these do not create space for antagonistic positions on what is regarded as self-evident truths, they kill their own freedom.