Genuine
magazine is the brainchild of Mbali
Dhlomo (picture above, right). who
originally self-financed the first
ten editions before going bust.
“When
I heard about the MDDA, I took a bus
to Johannesburg, and went right there.
I was the first to apply,” she
says.
Capital
wasn't immediately forthcoming, however.
Instead, the MDDA insisted on first
providing business mentorship.
In
2006, Dhlomo was ready to relaunch,
and with a cash injection from MDDA,
she now prints 3000 copies an edition
of her lifestyle magazine.
From
having started initially as self-taught
in planning, design, distribution
and marketing, Dhlomo says she now
sells these skills to others.
But
she cautions that sustainability is
not likely to be achieved in three
years - “I would wish for us
to be re-funded.”
Another
person who started a publication,
ran out of cash, but was then able
to pick up the pieces with MDDA support,
is Isaac Dlamini.
His
company owns Ishishini Lam, a paper
targeting hawkers and spaza shops.
Some 50 000 copies of the free 16
pager are printed every month.
At
present, the advertising revenue covers
only half the operating costs, and
Dlamini identifies his difficulty
as not having a dedicated sales person
to ads.
Sosh
Times is another beneficiary. “All
we need is advertising from the government,”
says the paper's Thabo Mooke, going
on to argue that there is a business,
rather than a charity, case for this
service.
He
puts his finger on the acid-test challenge
for the MDDA's work: “There
is no point in funding us if we cannot
sustain ourselves.”
Viability
is not easy to achieve in the micro-economics
of small-scale publishers. Even in
the mainstream things are tough, especially
nowadays.
Last
month, the world newspaper industry
body, representing more than 18 000
titles, cancelled its planned annual
conference in March. The event has
grown exponentially since its inception
six decades ago, but this year it
faced a stay away by members who were
tied up with their crises at home.
All
this means that MDDA has an uphill
struggle to produce enduring results.
The alternative, however, is for South
Africa to miss out on deepening its
media density and diversity.
As
important, however, also at stake
in this is the strategy of transforming
media ownership by expansion of the
sector, as distinct from interventions
to dispossess the existing proprietors.
Unlike
businesses like banks which agreed
under pressure to adopt industry charters
to redistribute share-holdings, the
country's media companies are offering
the success of the MDDA as a way to
grow new owners alongside them.
Unbundling
the mainstream would produce more
owners (at least amongst the usual
BEE players) - but it would not necessarily
expand the industry in the way MDDA
seeks to do.
In
this sense, the agency is an experiment
that has a broader significance than
just the projects it supports.
If
Peach, Mtshali, Dhlomo and the others
succeed, their achievements will resonate
much more widely.
