SA Politics Thread Part 13 The Days of Madlanga

Well, I'm not going to feel sorry for the closure of this media group which was just a Iqbal Surve propaganda tool.

Independent Media’s future uncertain as Sekunjalo pulls funding plug​


After pouring what it says is more than R5.2 billion into Independent Media and related media businesses over the past decade, Sekunjalo Group has pulled the funding plug, throwing the future of the newspaper company into doubt.

Also in doubt are titles such as the Cape Times, The Star and The Mercury. Sekunjalo says Independent Media’s licence to use these mastheads expires at the end of July.

Sekunjalo Group CEO Lucien Jacobs said it was too early to comment on the future direction of the loss-making Independent Media beyond July, although discussions are taking place with key shareholders to find sustainable solutions.

These include the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union (Sactwu) and Interacom.

www.moneyweb.co.za

Independent Media’s future uncertain as Sekunjalo pulls funding plug

Group says ‘no more’ after investing R5.2bn – throwing the future of the Cape Times, The Star and The Mercury into doubt.
www.moneyweb.co.za www.moneyweb.co.za
 
https://twitter.com/x/status/2080174035350991124

There are other firms conspicuously absent from Davis’s survey of the South African communications and public affairs universe; one can only surmise that this is because they are likely made up of individuals more aligned with her own ideology and worldview.

For example, Richard Calland has been a Mail & Guardian columnist since 2001 and one of the country’s most quoted political commentators. He is also a founding partner of The Paternoster Group, a political risk advisory whose disclosed past and present clients include major corporates and foreign embassies, and has served as a retained adviser to large retailers and investment bank clients. His work is lawful, appropriate and, in any estimation, legitimate. That is precisely the point — where is the Daily Maverick analysis of the commentator/consultant, with a no doubt extensive professional network, who advises corporates on the politics he narrates to the public?

Or take another example. Chris Vick has run one of South Africa’s best-known communications consultancies, previously named Spin, now Code Black, for decades, after serving in ANC-aligned government communications. Code Black advertise their services on the basis that: “Vick understands both the media economy and the political economy, and has extensive experience in public sector lobbying and communication. He also has solid relationships with key individuals in the media, political and business space.”

In 2012, the Mail & Guardian’s then-editor, Nic Dawes, wrote that Vick “speaks for money and power” and recounted Vick’s admission that he had placed material with journalists so easily that his articles ran under staff-reporter bylines — once, even as an editorial. Dawes called it deeply embarrassing to journalism. Yet, Vick’s career continued without interruption. In fact, he seems to take some sort of glee in the frenzy over Resolve; his hypocrisy is dumbfounding, yet this passes without comment.
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Lobbying is also not the exclusive preserve of advocating for business interests. It extends equally to not-for-profit organisations advancing a single cause, often with overt foreign funding behind them. Publications such as Daily Maverick, for example, routinely platform health-focused NGOs that are, in substance, lobby groups, driving narrow policy objectives like food labelling reform with little critical scrutiny applied either to the merits of their policy positions or to the financial interests that shape them.

The inference is difficult to avoid: this conduct becomes a “controversy” only when some of the practitioners are in some way currently or historically associated with the DA, and the accusers have political scores to settle.
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