Angola: Government appoints new management for Zap Media, Finstar

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Angola: Government appoints new management for Zap Media, Finstar

7:00 CAT | 31 Jan 2022

File photo: Lusa

Angola’s government on Friday appointed a management commission for the companies Zap Media and Finstar and suspended from office the members of the board of directors of the television company, which was chaired by Angolan businesswoman Isabel dos Santos, whose stakes in Zap and other companies had been seized in December 2019.

Luís Pedro Correia de Sousa Henriques, Catarina Eufemia Amorim da Luz Tavira Van-Dunem and Jorge Filipe da Silva Antunes Jacques Gomes have moved from the board of directors to the management commission. Nazaré Ferreira Ramos and Pedro Alexandre Tavares da Silva are also part of the new entity.

The moves legally formalise the removal of Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of former Angolan president José Eduardo dos Santos, , from management duties at the company.

Last week, the office of Angola’s attorney general announced the handover of the management of ZAP Media and Finstar to the Ministry of Telecommunications, Information Technology and Media (Minttics), adding that it should ensure that workers dismissed from the ZAP VIVA television channel be rehired. It recalled that the shares in ZAP Media S.A and Finstar owned by Isabel dos Santos had been seized in 2019, and at the time the boards of directors of the companies were made trustees.

“Due to the collective dismissal of the workers of the ZAP VIVA Channel, carried out by the above-mentioned Trustees, the National Asset Recovery Service requested in Court their replacement for the Ministry of Telecommunications, Information Technology and Media (Minttics), and this claim was granted,” the attorney general’s office said in a statement. “The new Trustee (Minttics) is in charge of reintegrating the dismissed workers, as well as practicing acts of prudent management for the maintenance of the companies.”

On 12 January it was announced that the ZAP Viva channel, which had been suspended in Angola since April of last year, would close and lay off hundreds of staff, according to local media reports.
It was thus the second channel after Vida TV to close its doors following a decision by the ministry to suspend channels citing a failure comply with legal requirements. Vida TV wound up its activities in July 2021, leaving over 300 professionals unemployed.

The news was advanced on 12 January by PlatinaLine website, according to which the workers were fired due to the long time of inoperability of the channel in national territory, as it only broadcasted in Portugal and Mozambique.

Contacted by Lusa, an official ZAP source said they had no information to give.

Angolan artists and public figures have since expressed their solidarity and regretted the closure of the channel, as did businesswoman Isabel dos Santos.

On her Instagram account, dos Santos, who has been living outside Angola since her father left power and is facing several legal proceedings in the country, expressed “affection and admiration” for her colleagues at ZAP and said she was “heartbroken”, expressing hope that she would “return one day”.

In September of last year, the Angolan operator had already announced a gradual process of redundancies following the suspension of the ZAP Viva channel, saying it was carrying out “the necessary steps to resume broadcasting in national territory,” despite “no timeframe for resolution” being in sight.

Without mentioning how many jobs were at stake, ZAP said at the time that it was “taking several measures to optimise different operational areas”, including human resources allocated to the ZAP Studios Unit, which is responsible for producing television content, including ZAP Viva.

ZAP is the result of a joint venture between Portuguese telecommunications company NOS (30%) and SOCIP – Sociedade de Investimentos e Participações, S.A. (100% controlled by Isabel dos Santos) that provides satellite television to Angola and Mozambique. The ZAP VIVA channel is available in Portugal via NOS.

On 21 April 2021, the government suspended the channels Record TV África, ZAP Viva and Vida TV, a measure justified by “legal inconformities”, also leaving suspended the provisional registrations of newspapers, magazines, web pages (website) of news and radio stations without effective activity in the last two years, whose list was never disclosed.

On the other hand, the pay-TV providers, namely TV CABO, SA, DSTV ANGOLA, SA, FINSTAR – owner of ZAP TV, were duly legalised, but distributed the channels ZAP Viva, Vida TV and Rede Record without the registration to exercise the activity of television in Angola, which led to the suspension.

At the time, the ministry said its action was aimed at adjusting the process of granting the definitive registration title for exercising the activity to media companies and has not given any further explanation to date.

The Union of Angolan Journalists (SJA) expressed concern again last week about the situation of the ZAP Viva channel because the process presents “many grey areas”.

“On the one hand, the news of the rehiring of the workers is welcome, it is applauded,” said Teixeira Cândido for the union. “On the other hand, there is a set of doubts that arise.”

According to Cândido, the state will provisionally take custody of Zap and Finstar, but “it must urgently privatise, because it cannot have a monopoly.”

Source: Lusa