Naspers supports the drive to incorporate previously disadvantaged communities into South Africa’s economy.

Our black economic empowerment (BEE) contribution in prior years includes:

• Phuthuma – M-Net’s first share scheme, which enabled some 8 000 disadvantaged South Africans to acquire shares in M-Net in 1995
• Phuthuma Futhi – M-Net’s second scheme was implemented in 1998, making a further 10% of M-Net/SuperSport shares available for BEE. The scheme came to a successful close in April 2004
• Welkom Trust – launched in 1998 and scheduled to mature in September 2006, enabled some 17 000 disadvantaged individuals to acquire shares in Naspers.

Naspers is also proud to have BEE partners in several of its businesses:

• Vakazi, a black women’s investment vehicle, which owns 30% of the equity of Afribooks, our schoolbook retailer. A further 30% of the equity is owned by 1 134 previously disadvantaged
  individuals
• Vakazi and Edu-Access, with an interest of 26% in Paarl Print
• Thebe Investments, with an interest of 30% in school and academic publishing group NEG.

Paarl Media also confirmed its commitment to empowerment by introducing Kurisani as a 26% empowerment partner in the Paarl Web Gauteng venture. Kurisani is also the investment company responsible for the loveLife campaign, which promotes a positive, healthy lifestyle amongst young people while at the same time focusing on HIV/Aids.

Apart from the contributions already made, Naspers is committed to developing further empowerment initiatives. The finalisation of the department of trade and industry’s codes of good practice, as well as the ICT sector charter, are imminent. Once completed, Naspers will announce its own broad-based BEE scheme.

The group is also conscious of its employment equity targets in its South African operations. To this end, a number of initiatives were launched in the operating businesses, including active transformation forums, the acceleration of employment equity by pursuing specific employment targets, mentorships for previously disadvantaged employees and preference in procurement.

Transformation
As part of our commitment to transformation, Naspers continues to invest in employment equity. This was also reflected in recent appointments. Dr Musa Shezi was recently appointed chief executive of Via Afrika. Dr Shezi was general manager for school and academic publishing, where he distinguished himself, before being appointed as the overall book division’s chief executive.

Imtiaz Patel was promoted to chief executive of SuperSport South Africa. At the newspaper division, Themba Khumalo was appointed editor of our largest publication, Daily Sun, and Andrew Koopman of the Cape Son.

We are also proud of the fact that 38% of our board already consists of people from previously disadvantaged communities, and 25% are women. At the same time we realise that our group will have to take transformation even further, and we hope to do so within the next few years.