Iqbal Survé-chaired Sekunjalo said it had ploughed billions of rands into Independent Media without any help from other shareholders, and now, because of load shedding, high paper prices and the impact of Covid-19 and the July 2021 unrest, it ‘cannot continue to support the company’ any longer, reports Fin24.

Last week Independent Media, which owns titles including The Star, Cape Argus and Pretoria News, was unable to pay staff their full salaries, with CEO Takudzwa Hove saying in a memo that shareholders could no longer support the company.

After the memo leaked, the remainder of the salaries came through, with another note saying Sekunjalo had ‘agreed to provide a capital injection whilst Independent Media works to make the business self-sustainable’. 

Sekunjalo said in a statement on Wednesday that it invested nearly R3bn in media assets alone, and as part of the Sekunjalo Independent Media consortium, specifically invested nearly R1.2bn over a decade to support the media company through its ‘challenges’.

‘For the record, Sekunjalo’s other partners in Independent Media – historically the Public Investment Corporation and the (Chinese) Interacom Investment Holdings consortium – have not invested any further funds into Independent Media, other than at the initial stage of the acquisition,’ Sekunjalo said.

Full Fin24 report