JOURNALISM
Why Manyi’s takeover of Gupta media may not be for the money
The Guptas never ventured into the media to make money. They did it to cultivate friends and favours in the state
Faleste was an ancient French form of capital punishment in which the person was tied up and left on the shore to be carried out by the tide. I suspect this is what the Guptas have done with Mzwanele Manyi. The Gupta family have sold Manyi their media company, which houses the newspaper The New Age and the television news channel ANN7. On the face of it, this is a deal that should increase media diversity and introduce new black ownership. But when it comes to the Guptas, nothing is ever quite what it seems, especially when it is wrapped in the Bell Pottinger rhetoric of "radical economic transformation". The deal is vendor-financed, which means the sellers have lent the money to the buyer to do the deal — they paid Manyi to take it away. He now owes them R450m, and it is not clear how he intends to pay this from an unprofitable operation. Of course, the Guptas never ventured into the media to make money. They did it to cultivate friends and favours in the state, who would repay the...
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