Chinese acquire stake in One Africa TV

SHENZHEN Media, a state-controlled Chinese multimedia group, has acquired a 36,75 per cent stake in local private television station OneAfrica TV through acquiring Telkom South Africa’s 75 per cent share in their pay-TV subsidiary Telkom Media for a nominal amount last week.

Shenzhen Media, a vast multimedia group with dozens of satellite and Internet-based TV channels, radio stations, magazines and newspapers, is based in southern China’s main financial centre Shenzhen (Guangdong Province).
Telkom SA announced last week that it had sold its shares in Telkom Media to Shenzhen on an ‘as is’ basis in what amounted to a forced fire sale of the struggling pay-television licence holder.
‘Telkom has managed to avert the winding up of Telkom Media by selling its 75 per cent interest in and claims against Telkom Media to Shenzhen Media for a nominal amount,’ the company said in a statement last week.
The balance of Telkom Media shares are owned by SA film producer Anant Singh’s company Videovision Entertainment, MSG Afrika Media and WDB Investment Holdings.
Telkom Media in 2007 acquired a 49 per cent share in OneAfrica TV, which is majority owned by the private broadcaster’s management and two Namibian investment funds, Stimulus and Aantu Investments.
Shenzhen’s 75 per cent stake in Telkom Media therefore gave it about 36 per cent shareholding in OneAfrica, CEO Paul van Schalkwyk said.
‘I’d go so far as to say that OneAfrica as part of the package probably made it very attractive to Shenzhen,’ he said.
The deal with Telkom Media had retarded growth at their station by ‘at least two years’, mostly for failing to invest in OneAfrica TV because of their own problems in getting onto air, Van Schalkwyk said.
‘Shenzhen is a very big company, and they seem to know what they are doing,’ he said of their new Chinese partners.
Built from scratch with local expertise, OneAfrica TV started broadcasting in November 2003. It broadcasts to most major urban centres in Namibia via 28 transmitters, making it the largest privately owned network in Namibia, according to director Madryn Cosburne .
Shenzhen’s takeover of Telcom Media still has to be approved by the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), as South Africa’s broadcasting legislation prohibits foreign majority ownership of local terrestrial broadcasters.
* John Grobler is a freelance journalist