Johannesburg - Late on Friday night, Iqbal Survé phoned Mandla Mandela, the ailing statesman’s grandson: “Tell Madiba, Independent’s coming home,” he said.
“If there’s one thing that will make him get better faster, it’s this,” the younger Mandela responded.
Survé’s Sekunjalo consortium had just signed a binding agreement with Independent News and Media, publishers of The Sunday Independent among others, to buy the Irish group’s South African interests for R2 billion.
All that remains is for the deal to be endorsed by the Competitions Commission and for formal approval by INM’s bankers and major shareholders over the next six to 12 weeks.
Survé, a medical doctor and Struggle activist who became a business tycoon, has big dreams for the group.
“Independent is a great company, a great case study on why there is growth in media, particularly local and vernacular newspapers.” He said Independent was also a very well-run company, having operated under constrained circumstances, with its profits funding the debts of its international owners. Survé wants to see what staff can achieve with owners who fund their plans and invest in their futures. “It has great strengths, like its iconic titles, but also great areas for improvement, particularly in digital,” said Survé, who hopes staff will “straddle the print world as well as feed the demands of the digital age. “While
print in developed countries was on a downward trend, in developing countries like Brazil, India and Indonesia there was growth because of rising literacy and income levels. “We are in the same kind of demographic space in Africa,” said Survé.
Independent’s successes, particularly with the Isolezwe newspapers in KwaZulu-Natal, bore this out, he said.
”It’s time we started giving people what they want. Something they can read, in a language they can understand and in a format that suits them.
“Ten years ago The Economist was calling Africa the Dark Continent, recently it wrote of Africa as ‘the aspirational continent’.
“Perhaps we’re too humble, but we don’t speak about our achievements. We can be critical, but also positive. We can help attract growth and investment and break the spiral of poverty. Let us set the tone.” Survé said the Independent group could be “a tipping point in the history of our country”. The timing “couldn’t be better”, since South Africa was “about to move from teenager to young adult.
How wonderful, that Independent is back in South African hands with people who understand this vision of the country and continent.
“That’s why it’s the greatest gift we can give Madiba – since he was the person who let Independent buy the company all those years ago.”
Sunday Independent