Naspers Media Group: Ethnic Past and Global Present. Media Firms, Class and Ethnic Identities during the Age of Convergence and Expansion: The Case of Naspers in the First Decade of the 21st Century

Sethunya Tshepho Mosime

doi:10.5789/8-1-156

Abstract

This work analyses the reasons why the South African media giant Naspers Limited scaled down its businesses in the early 2000s at a time when the political economy of communication and media economics pointed towards expansions and mergers as the business strategy of the future. Its acquisition of a controlling shareholding of OpenTV in March 1999, and the subsequent disposing of the same interests in May 2002, can be perceived as signalling the need to re-visit the belief that media firms in the future can only get bigger. The case of Naspers illustrated how in the global media economy, class and ethnicity become more complex as market interests grow from local to global. Local bourgeois class and ethnic interests that took a long time to invent become increasingly threatened in the age of global markets. From its inception, initially called Nasionale Pers, Naspers was characterised by "a certain symbiosis of material and ethnic interests" (Giliomee, 2003, p. 373). It was founded to invent Afrikaner group identity. It has also since then grown to become a powerful player in the global media economy by undertaking expansion and mergers. This presents a paradox with the very opportunity to grow bigger and more global simultaneously being a threat to Naspers‘s cultural ‘rootedness‘ and past.

Highlights

This work explores the business strategies of the South African media giant Naspers in the first decade of post-apartheid South Africa against the backdrop of the hard-inventedAfrikaner identity that it was originally established to promote
It has been argued that the end of apartheid made the Afrikaner nationalism on which Naspers was founded become less profitable for Naspers
To fully appreciate how a media firm born of a strong ideological basis such as Naspers approached the era of expansion and mergers in the first decade of the 21st century, media economics alone is less than adequate

Summary

Introduction

This work explores the business strategies of the South African media giant Naspers in the first decade of post-apartheid South Africa against the backdrop of the hard-inventedAfrikaner identity that it was originally established to promote. Post Apartheid South Africa, Profits and Afrikaner Identities: Class and Ethnicity in the Local and Global Context As its acquisition and subsequent resale of OpenTV will be used to illustrate, Naspers has had to change direction quickly and often in the battle to sustain a balance between profits and empire building on a world scale and its local Afrikaner identity.

Results

Conclusion