There have been mixed reactions to the “sale” of ANN7 and The New Age to Mzwanele Manyi by the Guptas.
There was a suggestion that Manyi could have been used as a front, especially after the Guptas came under attack from several quarters for their alleged role in state capture.
The controversial family, President Jacob Zuma’s friends, has also been dumped by the country's top four banks.
India's bank of Baroda has given the Guptas until end of next month to close their accounts, a move that has caused panic among ANN7 and The New Age staff regarding how they will be paid.
Yesterday an upbeat Manyi said he had clinched it through a vendor financing agreement whereby “you ask the owners to loan you money to buy this thing”.
Manyi has vociferously defended the Guptas, saying they were not the enemy - white monopoly capital was.
Small Business Development Minister Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu congratulated Manyi, saying “we need to support him in this venture” and that it was high time for blacks to start getting into the media space.
“As a black person I'm very excited that somebody of his calibre has been bold enough to actually take on something this serious. It's something that needs to be supported by all of us. That's my view,” said Zulu.
She described Manyi as a “very vocal person, especially on issues of black empowerment”.
PAC spokesperson Kenneth Mokgatlhe also congratulated Manyi, saying they were humbled to see Africans taking control of media ownership, adding they hoped Manyi was not fronting.
Asked if they knew about the transaction, Competition Commission spokesperson Sipho Ngwema said: “No, we do not have this transaction in our records.”
Among thousands of leaked e-mails dubbed #Guptaleaks, it was shown that Manyi had previously e-mailed his CV to a Gupta lieutenant, reportedly in the hope of being appointed in a parastatal.
Yesterday, Oakbay Investments announced that they had clinched a deal with Manyi, through his company Lodidox and Management, for the sale of its shareholdings in its two media businesses: Infinity Media, which operates 24-hour news channel ANN7 and TNA Media, which publishes The New Age newspaper for a combined amount of R450 million.
Oakbay acting chief executive Ronica Ragavan said the sale was part of the company's commitment to “preserve jobs and providing certainty to over 7 500 hard-working employees throughout the country”.
The sale, said Ragavan, would also allow the shareholders time to focus on “clearing its name in the face of unfounded media allegations”.
Manyi lashed out at his detractors who said he was a Gupta front on social media.
“The Guptas can speak for themselves. I just saw an opportunity to buy a property that was in a toxic environment. I will put it into a growth path. It's a major opportunity because the employees there were sort of under siege by not knowing what's going to happen.
"I hope this transaction will provide some certainty over what's going to happen. Their jobs are guaranteed and business will continue as usual. Everybody should be happy about this development.”
He added that the transaction was a good story for the country. “The government must put its money where its mouth is.
"This deal is the best representation of radical economic transformation, the media ownership has changed. If government can't support this, then I don't know what they would support.”