Naspers regrets doing Zim job

2008-06-25 11:38

Johannesburg - Paarl Web, a subsidiary of media giant Naspers, will donate all the revenue from a print job for Robert Mugabe to Zimbabweans suffering under his regime, its chief executive said on Wednesday.

The printing company did not know it was printing brochures for Zimbabwe's ruling Zanu-PF party because the R2.6m job was commissioned by a creative agency in Johannesburg, said Paarl Web CEO Stephen van der Walt.

"This is a deeply regrettable circumstance. If we knew it was Zanu-PF, we would have politely refused it. The best we can do now is take the revenue and plough it back to a much better cause for the people of Zimbabwe," he told Sapa.

Van der Walt said the revenue derived from the print job a fortnight ago amounted to R300 000.

Not our client

"We are in the process of talking to six organisations in Zimbabwe to deliver the money to the people of Zimbabwe."

He said a creative agency in Johannesburg commissioned the printing of the brochures which list one hundred good things the Zimbabwean government had done since independence.

"The work is not inciting violence or hate speech ... It lists a hundred reasons on why the Zanu-PF government had been good for Zimbabwe post the freedom struggle.

"If we had been offered the opportunity [to see the brochures before publication], we would have distanced ourselves from it.

"Zanu-PF is not a client of the Paarl Media group. We have never received an order from them and we have never received payment from them. This was paid for by a South African client," said Van der Walt, who declined to name the client.

Naspers owns, among other things, all the big daily and weekly Afrikaans newspapers in South Africa and the Daily Sun tabloid.

The Caxton-owned The Citizen newspaper reported on Wednesday that Caxton's printers had first been ear-marked for the job but that the company did not carry it out after its chairperson Frederik van Zyl Slabbert threatened to resign if it went ahead.

News24 is part of 24.com, a subsidiary of Naspers

- SAPA