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Media supremoAt 73, Ton Vosloo cuts a tall, sprightly figure as he approaches to meet us. His dove-grey shirt sets off his full head of grey hair and jaunty burnt orange tie. “I’m wearing a tie today because Helen Zille will be visiting me later this morning,” he remarks dryly when we settle down for the interview. A quick look around his large but otherwise minimalistic office reveals the imposing presence of paintings by departed legendary South African artists such as Pierneef, Hugo Naudé, Irma Stern and Cecil Higgs.
Since 1997, he has been non-executive chairperson of the Naspers Group. “My job before was that of goalkeeper. Now I am the one who ‘massages’ the flock into the same direction,” he says when asked for the details of his current role in a massive media conglomerate.
Vosloo has received many accolades in his long career, including three honorary doctorates. He feels privileged to have been honoured in this way, but not the need to crow about it.
Naspers, located at the tip of the African continent and once regarded as a mouthpiece of the Nationalist government, has long since jettisoned its once tainted reputation in the eyes of many. It is now at the forefront and one of the 10 largest media companies in the world.
Larger, for instance, than The Washington Post and The New York Times.
Naspers was listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in 1994 and, in February this year, surged through the R400 per share mark, which meant a market cap on the JSE of R162 billion – placing it 10th overall of listed companies.
Vosloo maintains he fulfilled one of the most important duties as chief executive officer when he chose Koos Bekker to be his successor when he himself became executive chairperson in 1997.
He attributes much of the Group’s phenomenal success to Bekker, who initiated the incursion into the electronic media.
A true visionary, Vosloo had long realised the inevitability of diversification when the printed media’s main source of income – advertising – received a serious setback after the introduction of television in South Africa under a government monopoly in 1976.
First came M-Net, followed by various independent companies, for example MultiChoice, M-Cell, MWEB and SuperSport, to name only a few.
Vosloo and Bekker, as a team, attend regular meetings on behalf of Naspers in the 129 countries where Media24 has business units.
Vosloo regards the advent of the Internet as the most important innovation since the Gutenberg printing press was discovered in the 15th century.
He does not consider himself as particularly technologically savvy, but he knew instinctively that the advent of the international Internet would revolutionise the way in which people communicate.
“Newspaper circulation figures worldwide have dropped dramatically. The print media has been turned upside down,” he says.
“A tsunami of copy descends on the news desks of newspapers and magazines daily.
“Newspapers have to separate the substance from the chaff.”
Vosloo adds that the WikiLeaks imbroglio has illustrated that the Internet has dealt a death blow to dictatorships.
He has been active in the media industry for 56 years, initially as a journalist, and from 1977 to 1983 as editor of Beeld. With his editorial policy firmly directed at reform and renewal, Beeld developed into one of the country’s most influential newspapers.
In 1984, he was appointed CEO of Naspers Beperk, and from 1992 to 1997 he became executive chairperson of the Group. Since 1997, he has worn the cap of non-executive chairperson.
Vosloo caused shock waves in this country, but earned fulsome praise internationally when, as editor of Beeld in 1983, he wrote an editorial wherein he propagated dialogue between the government and the ANC. He wrote these words after the government initiated talks with the South West Africa People’s Organization, which was banned at the time.
This was the era in the history of the Afrikaner press of so-called verligte (liberal) and verkrampte (Afrikaner nationalist) newspapers.
His perceived perfidy incurred the wrath of the Afrikaner establishment, but the verligte set welcomed his standpoint.
However, the late PW Botha was very angry at the time but, says Vosloo with a philosophical smile, they ironed out their differences of opinion many years ago.
As editor of a verligte newspaper, he admits he frequently felt alone during this difficult period. “But the buck stops with you as the leader, and all my instincts told me that what I had put on the table was inevitable.”
Vosloo smiles the smile of someone who has lived through ‘interesting times’. “Instinct makes you anticipate things. Later, your nose leads you. A newspaper man will always be cynical. You don’t, for instance, simply accept official statements,” he says.
He coined a word from the German language for these intuitive feelings – vingerspits gevoel.
Vosloo continues: “In the publication industry, you cannot afford to become depressed. You have to ride the monster, spread information into different directions. Naspers has never been fearful of renewal.
“Piet Cillié liked to quote General William ‘Bull’ Nelson of the American Civil War, who said something to the effect: ‘If you want to win, you have to be there firstest with the mostest’.”
Today, the Group is in control of 65% of its niche markets. “It isn’t our fault that other media companies folded. It’s a pity because we like competition,” he quips.
The discussion inevitably leads to the current threat against media freedom in South Africa.
Vosloo takes this very seriously, and maintains that the media as a whole perhaps should have mobilised more firmly against this threat.
He claims it would be disastrous if the government should go ahead with the proposed media tribunal and legislation. “The day that happens, we will join the ranks of countries like Iraq and Egypt where freedom is not unassailable.
Then we can kiss freedom of expression – one of the important tenets of our highly regarded Constitution – goodbye,” he says.
When asked his views on the subject of leadership, Vosloo pauses thoughtfully while stirring his lemon rooibos tea, and suggests that it may be an indefinable quality, something one is probably born with.
He did not follow the normal route of business degree courses, however, in 1970 he won the sought-after Nieman Fellowship to study at Harvard for a year – but he says running an organisation is an extension of what it takes to lead an editorial team.
Skill at conducting human relationships is also of cardinal importance. He has had to handle daunting crises, fire top leaders, fly certain people to head office and sequester them in a room until they sorted out their differences.
Vosloo places a high premium on loyalty – mutual loyalty between a leader and his/her staff. He believes that with people of integrity in key positions who are honest and fair, good corporate governance is a given.
When advising a new editor, he would say: “Open the windows, banish the stale air, bring in new thoughts. Be unorthodox!”
Vosloo has tried to remain accessible to his staff, even the most humble.
While chatting with Steve Mulholland recently, the latter said he takes lunch alone in the boardroom of the Newspaper Association of South Africa. Vosloo chooses to have lunch at the Naspers cafeteria when it fits in with his schedule. He says it is during such interludes that he gleans important information that he would otherwise have missed out on.
He is proud of Naspers’s efforts to uplift previously disadvantaged communities, its main focus being on literacy and educational programmes in Africa. In its past financial year, R45 million was spent on corporate social investment initiatives.
On the subject of black economic empowerment (BEE) and affirmative action: According to the 2010 annual report, “Naspers is one of the most empowered media companies for the third year running, according to the Financial Mail empowerment survey that reviews the top listed companies on the JSE for black economic empowerment.”
Media24’s broad-based BEE initiative, Welkom Yizani, has approximately 100 000 black individuals and groups indirectly owning a part of Media24 Limited. MultiChoice South Africa’s two successful empowerment initiatives, Phuthuma Nathi and Phuthuma Nathi 2, have approximately 120 000 black individuals and groups owning indirectly a share in MultiChoice South Africa.
Vosloo’s advice to aspiring journalists and business leaders is contained mainly in two words: passion and energy. The one thing, he emphasises, that no one must say to him is: “I don’t have the time.”
Preparation is enormously important. “Be curious and a good listener,” he adds, and one is reminded of tributes by many friends and colleagues who all speak of Vosloo’s unquenchable inquisitiveness and his ability to hear people out. He does not become despondent, and the concept of stress in popular parlance is somewhat foreign to him. “Stress means adrenalin to me,” he says.
Vosloo, however, admits to a period during the 1990s when he did a fair bit of tossing and turning in bed at night. During this time, he had to face perhaps the biggest personal disappointment of his professional life.
A group of four senior journalists had disregarded a Naspers board decision by confessing to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
The journalists were not aware that Vosloo had liaised in depth with Archbishop Desmond Tutu about Naspers’s position. The Group’s stance was that it had never been responsible for setting the Nationalist government’s policies.
He felt the journalists lacked the benefit of hindsight, and that Naspers’s role in combating the effects of the regime’s policies had not
been acknowledged.
Vosloo experienced the action of the journalists as a personal slight. But never one to bear grudges, cordial relationships were ultimately restored and all four journalists went on to become editors.
One of the last things he accomplished before 1997, at the end of his tenure as CEO of Naspers, was to buy the other 50% of Rapport, which was retained by Perskor when the latter’s Sunday paper, Dagbreek, and Beeld were incorporated under the banner of Rapport in 1970. This was a sweet deal for him, a day when he felt matters had been set right.
Vosloo grew up in Uitenhage in the Eastern Cape. The youngster was only six when his father died in 1944 from complications resulting from a war wound. He did not live to see his daughter, Joan, who was born four months after his death.
Vosloo says of his mother, Tant Hetta, who died 20 years ago at 86: “The first half of her life was very hard. She lost her husband, and two years later her son, Freddie. She had to work hard to raise my younger sister, Joan, and me.”
He chuckles when he says his mother never mollycoddled them. “I may have grown up in a female-dominated household, I didn’t learn to ‘slay the dragon’, but I did have to buy the meat every day for the family before I went to school in the morning! From the age of five to 13, I sold Die Oosterlig (now Die Burger-Oos) at the station afternoons after school for pocket money.
“My mother took me to the library when I was a small boy – there were only English books available there at the time – and I became an avid reader from a very young age.
“She was noble of character,” Vosloo says, with unmistakable tenderness. “She taught me to take responsibility, to step up to the plate as a man of my word. She was a strong role model for my later life.”
Are there others who influenced or inspired him, personally and professionally?
He mentions four pivotal people, all of them journalists, fine people no longer with us, who became his mentors: Schalk Pienaar, editor of Beeld; Cillié, chairperson of Naspers; Dirk de Villiers, general manager of Nasionale Tydskrifte; and Rykie van Reenen, veteran author and journalist.
When we enquire about his plans for the future, Vosloo tells us he has two more years to go before he has to retire. He will continue to support the issues that are close to his heart, such as the preservation of the Afrikaans language, the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra and the environment.
He plans to travel, read more, enjoy music and all forms of art, and go for long walks with his second wife, Anet Pienaar-Vosloo. Twenty years younger than he is, he describes her as a dynamo who does not allow him to rest too much.
He is close to his only child, a daughter named Nissa, from a previous marriage. Father and daughter share the same sense of humour.
“One remains curious about many things. Life is there to be seized,” he says. “I also want to write a book about my life.”
Having been a journalist in the days of Hendrik Verwoerd and having reported on many important events in South Africa’s history for more than half a century, doubtless that his memoir should make interesting reading.
Then Vosloo adds: “But I don’t have the time right now.” As soon as the words are out, he emits a hearty laugh – realising he has just uttered the response he loves to hate. ▲
Estelle Neethling
