AT THE END OF OCTOBER, IQBAL Survé will close down the domestic newswire service of the African News Agency (ANA) he founded four years ago when the South African Press Association (Sapa) collapsed. The demise of ANA is a telling footnote in Survé’s desperate fight against creditors, fiscal authorities and the Mpati Commission of Inquiry into the Public Investment Corporation (PIC). His aides have been spinning it with claims that the company is to be transformed into a “content curation and syndication platform with global reach”.
Whether Survé truly believes that the venture can successfully compete with Bloomberg and Reuters, without producing a paragraph of original content, is moot. Nobody else does.
Nonetheless, money has been committed to new offices in Lagos, Nairobi and Cairo, according to media statements made in early September. At the same time, local staff members were sent section 189 retrenchment notices informing them the company was financially doomed in an oversubscribed local media market that had no uptake for domestic wire copy.
In reality, it had been dealt a blow from within the Survé stable itself, as Independent Media, controlled by Survé, abruptly cancelled its subscription, resulting in a revenue loss of around R1.1 million a month. The Citizen reportedly also failed to renew its contract after ANA tried to hike its already high subscription fees.
In response, ANA staff faced with retrenchment demanded to see the company’s financials. The human resources team tasked with negotiating the layoffs happens to work for Independent Media. The team’s response was that the demand was out of order because ANA was not a public company and therefore not obliged to disclose it’s financial records.
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Denne historien er fra November 2019-utgaven av Noseweek.
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Lennie The Liquidator Faces R500,000 Defamation Suit
After losing his cool when his fees were questioned
Panel Beater De Luxe
Danmar Autobody and its erstwhile directors get a serious panel beating in court papers. Corruption and theft are said to have destroyed the firm chaired by Nelson Mandela’s eldest daughter, leaving 200 workers destitute and threatening to kill.
Meet Covid Diarist Ronald Wohlman
Ronald Wohlman – EX SOUTH African copywriter, author, and actor – never dreamt that his lockdown diaries, written on Facebook and followed by people all over the world – would become his “life’s work”.
A Picture Of Peace?
Beware: Appearances can be deceptive
Flogging A (Battery-Driven) Dead Horse
Why plug-in vehicles are not all they’re cracked up to be– and, likely, never will be
Everybody Drinks Corona
I am hesitant to go Into the pub today. Not because it’s illegal, but there is a crème colored 1985 Mercedes 300D parked behind the pine tree. This means the devil is inside; that’s what we call Dr. De Villiers. You don’t know whether you will encounter the good doctor with the charming bedside manner or the violent, bipolar bully. The problem is, most of the time, you can never be sure which it is, so it’s best to always keep a social distance.
Never Take A Hypochondriac To A Pandemic
From Ronald Wohlman’s New York Corona Diary
The money train
Transnet in court battle with liquidators of Gupta-linked audit firm over R57m in ‘corrupt’ payments and invoices
‘He's no pharmaceutical genius, he's a vulture'
Pharma con seeks prison release to ‘help find Covid cure’
Bush school – A memoir
OUR SCHOOL WAS IN THE MIDDLE of the bush, ten miles from the nearest town in the harsh beauty of the Zimbabwean highveld. It started life in World War II as No 26 EFTS Guinea Fowl, a Royal Air Force elementary flying training school and I arrived there in 1954, just seven years after it became an all-white co-ed state boarding school.
