The closure of SAPA by its shareholders, who are the white monopoly newspaper owners, is a serious blow to the flow of information in South Africa. A large proportion of the reports carried on this platform used to come from SAPA, which used to respond to media releases, and attended press conferences as well as congresses of the movement. The closure of SAPA indicates an intention by the newspapers to turn away from news, and instead to purvey their propaganda, unsupported by facts. For these owners, facts have become an embarrassment. Our movement needs to react to the loss of SAPA. There are things we can do that will compensate for what SAPA will no longer do. We can even surpass SAPA what SAPA did, if we can only form the common will to do them. _____
Closure of SA Press Association Press Statement by SAPA Board of Directors Further to its press statement dated September 15, 2014, the board of directors of Sapa met last week and confirmed that the decision, taken last September and by the members' AGM on 27 November 2014, to wind up the news agency as a non-profit company must now be implemented. Nkonki Incorporated, an independent firm of auditors and financial advisors, has been appointed as its financial advisors to assist and guide Sapa through the wind up process. As noted in the earlier announcement, three suitable parties - namely Gallo Images, KMM Review Publishers and Sekunjalo Investments Holdings - had expressed their interest. In the period since September, the parties had each presented their proposals for the establishment of a commercially based content generating and syndication service business and at last week's meeting provided updates on their original proposals. Nkonki is evaluating these proposals. The board, through Nkonki, has now entered a process of calling for bids for the assets of Sapa. The news agency's Chair, Minette Ferreira emphasised "that Sapa as a special category non-profit company could not be sold off". "After the disposal of the assets the company will be liquidated and its operations will cease on March 31, 2015," said Ferreira. Ferreira reiterated "that the Board meeting also underlined its commitment to ensuring the interests of all Sapa employees were correctly and meticulously attended to, as well as seeking where possible to maximise opportunities for these staffers, either with whatever new company was established, or if possible, elsewhere within the media industry." "In addition, current subscribers would in due course be briefed on the plans and would be approached directly by the operators of the new syndication business." . Statement issued by Minette Ferreira on behalf of the Sapa Board of Directors, February 5 2015 From: http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71654?oid=9 38737 <http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71654?oid= 938737&sn=Detail&pid=71616> &sn=Detail&pid=71616 -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
