State must do more to help mining and farming
Mediamark, a sales and marketing business, reported a 21 percent increase in revenue to R305 million for the period.
As a result, operating profit rose to R155.6m compared with R120.8m for the same period a year before.
Kagiso expected its radio stations to continue the strong performance this year.
Trading conditions for Urban Brew were uncertain for this year.
Urban Brew derives a large part of its revenue from the SABC and also produces content for Naspers-owned pay-tv operator Multichoice, yet was affected during the half-year by production delivery phasing from broadcasting customers delaying projects to this year.
According to Morobe, the studio’s results traditionally showed growth during the second half of the year. Kagiso was “in research mode” into feasibility of owning a digital TV channel when the national digital TV migration plans get going.
Morobe also said prospects north of the Limpopo “were exciting”.
With R716m cash in the bank, another acquisition may not be too far off. On Wednesday Kagiso Media announced the acquisition of 60 percent in USP Designs, an online retail property site.
Shareholders could have been pleased by the 1c increase to 41c a share dividend.
THE GOVERNMENTIS doing very little to demonstrate that it has the vision and ability to resolve the overriding concerns about ownership of two key sectors of our economy, mining and agriculture.
There has been an absolute hullabaloo over Deputy Agriculture Minister Pieter Mulder’s comment about land ownership when he, unfortunately, used the term “bantu-speaking people”. The real issue was his deep and entirely legitimate concern about his constituency, mainly white Afrikaner commercial farmers who happen to feed the nation, who feel as if they are in the ruling party’s firing line.
They are accused of not doing enough to “transform” the agricultural economy. As Hermann Giliomee pointed out in the Afrikaans press this week, it just shows that we are unable to have a mature debate about pertinent issues.
When South Africans think about the land question, Julius Malema springs to mind: The whites stole it. Those in government, including Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Tina Joemat-pettersson and Rural Development and Land Affairs Minister Gugile Nkwinti, do little to provide an alternative vision that is positive – and, indeed, a counterbalance to the ruling party’s prevailing stance: extreme and economically damaging populism.
Then we have the mealy-mouthed response of the Department of Trade and Industry director-general, Lionel October, to a question at a briefing on the economic cluster of ministers yesterday about how the government was ensuring protection of South African business in that neighbouring den of thieves, Zimbabwe.
He repeatedly assured journalists that business – in the case of Zimplats – would be protected by some treaty signed by South Africa and Zimbabwe. The fact that President Robert Mugabe has ignored almost all directives over political and economic agreements – not least of all the requirement that Mugabe put in place a new constitution and a fair electoral system – doesn’t seem to penetrate.
While so-called Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai parades around “an investment conference” in Johannesburg selling investment opportunities in his country, Mugabe and his indigenisation minister are now well on their way to destroying Zimbabwe’s mining industry. They have done it for agriculture already, having driven commercial farmers off their farms and replaced them with Zanu-pf tenderpreneurs.
Now Zimplats, the Zimbabwe arm of Impala Platinum, which has been at war with its workforce in Rustenburg, simply has to hand over 29 percent of its holdings by the middle of March to the Zimbabwe government. Or more correctly to the Mugabe controlling faction of that government.
South Africa’s approach to Zimbabwe is spineless. Our Foreign Ministry doesn’t believe Tsvangirai has what it takes to run a country. That may well be, but he won the last election, even though it was heavily rigged in favour of Zanu-pf.
He is a governor now in a so-called unity government, but he isn’t at the country’s political rudder.
South Africa is largely responsible. It should insist on an exit strategy for Mugabe before he destroys the sub-continent. Instead, policy confusion abounds abroad and at home. There is no clearly defined future for white commercial farmers. Even Nkwinti admits it. Farmers on 88 million hectares are not investing in their farms as they don’t know if they have a future.
We just bumble on talking about green papers and getting administrative mechanisms right – 18 years into “democracy”.