SACP IS OPPOSED TO MEDIA MONOPOLY
The SACP last week released a media statement stating in principle our objection to the proposed increased shareholding of Mvela Group in Avusa. What we have received in the public domain in the name of analysis is a slipshod criticism of our position. The worst we have been told is that we are targeting Cde Tokyo Sexwale. What a lie!!
The liberals who have taken time to caricature our position have failed to explain to the nation that Mvela Group was at its inception owned 51% by Mvela Holdings, a company that Cde Tokyo has some shares in. Over time the shareholding of Mvela Holdings in Mvela Group has been eroded when shares were sold to various other companies, not black companies for that matter.
What the liberal ilk have failed to do is explain to us after the deal what would be the percentage of shareholding of Avusa by companies like Blackstar, listed in the London Stock exchange; AIM and JSE listed Alternative Exchange and Coronation Fund managers. Anton Harber, Chris Vick and their collective must sketch out the detail of the ownership on Avusa post this deal and let us see again if that structure backs up their ludicrous claim that we are opposed to black ownership and that we are targeting Cde Tokyo Sexwale.
Their inability to tell the nation the truth and only analyse in factional terms will be exposed by bringing these facts to the fore, facts that they either do not know of or conveniently choose to ignore as they do not feed into their own factionalist thinking.
Ours as the SACP is not the narrow position the media adopt which assumes we are just targeting Cde Tokyo Sexwale. Ours is a principled position against monopoly in the media in the first instance, whether it is Mvela or Caxton or Naspers, as articulated in our Draft Programme for discussion at our July Congress.
It's not a narrow position against an individual. The SACP is against media monopoly and pushes for diversity of the media landscape in respect of ownership and control, content, views & opinions, language, gender, class, geography, etc.
As the SACP we maintain that the greatest threat to media freedom in SA remains the media monopoly and the lack of media diversity.
Statement issued by the SACP, June 25 2012
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