Cape Town - The draft Protection of Information Bill and the proposed media appeals tribunal are deeply disturbing, Naspers chairperson
Ton Vosloo said on Friday.
"Should they become a reality, South Africa will be a different society," Vosloo said in an address prepared for delivery at the
Naspers [JSE:NPN] annual general meeting.
"People will still buy more or less as many newspapers as they do today, to read about Orlando Pirates and about the weather and about Paris Hilton."
However, newspapers and radio stations would not be able to report about corruption. "South Africa will no longer be a transparent democracy."
Cover-ups would be easy and corruption would flourish. There was little doubt that the South African economy would go to pieces, Vosloo said.
"Hopefully, saner voices within the ANC will prevail and this will not become law."
Emerging marketsTurning his focus on Naspers' business strategy, Vosloo said emerging markets are central to the group's business focus, pointing to investments in what he referred to as the Bricsa block, consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China and Sub-Saharan Africa.
This strategy had turned out to be a wise move as in the past 12 months and in the midst of the global economic downturn, Naspers revenues had grown 5% to R28bn.
"Most emerging markets in which we operate survived the downturn reasonably well, compared to developed economies," Vosloo said.
Emerging markets remained central for Naspers, and in Latin America, BuscaPé was added to the group in September 2009.
The internet segment, dominated by Allegro in Central Europe, Tencent in China and Mail.ru in Russia, all grew and revenues were up 24%.
The pay-television businesses largely proved resilient and recorded revenue growth of 12%, thanks to subscriber growth during the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
"More recently, subscription sales did slow."
Vosloo said operating margins were slightly down, because of the cost of building the subscriber base and higher content costs.
"This is a consequence of increased competition and more local content production."
Irdeto, the television technology business, felt the economic headwinds, but cut costs.
Vosloo said the print media business, however, suffered a 5% decline in its top line because of lower advertising revenues.
"In a recession, people tend to read more, but advertisers spend less."
Last year, Naspers contributed R3.67bn to the SA fiscus, comprising tax on company profits, tax on employees' salaries, VAT, secondary tax on companies as well as skills development levies.
"We take pleasure in helping to build the new South Africa," Vosloo said.
Naspers was one of the most empowered media companies in South Africa for the third year running, according to the Financial Mail empowerment survey, which reviewed the top listed companies on the JSE.
"We are also pleased that Media24 received full points for the enterprise development and socio-economic elements of the department of trade and industry's empowerment scorecard," Vosloo said.
- Fin24.com is a Naspers publication.