Multichoice won't renew contract with ANN7

Earlier - Multichoice CEO, Calvo Mawela announced that the channel will be taken off its bouquet later this year.

"The board of Multi-choice South Africa has decided that in light of the ongoing controversies - it will not be appropriate to renew ANN7's current contract when it ends in August. Instead, we are starting a process of finding a new black-owned news channel," he says. 

Last year - the DA asked Icasa to look into payments Multichoice made to ANN7 and the SABC - apparently in exchange for political influence.

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This week, Icasa said it would investigate whether the payments were above board.

Mawela says they made some mistakes with the ANN7 contract - but stressed there was no evidence of corruption.

He says it's been a humbling episode for Multichoice.

"While we entered into an agreement with ANN7, at a time the extent of state capture was unknown, we fully understand the outrage of the public regarding endemic corruption in our country and accept that we should have dealt with concerns with ANN7 swiftly. There is no doubt that we have managed our communication of this issue poorly," he says. 

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He says their agreement with the SABC has also been brought up.

It should be noted that the Multichoice contract with SABC did not form part of the brief given to the Audit and Risk Committee. However, to be clear, Parliament has referred the issue of the SABC to the special investigating unit. MultiChoice is fully co-operating with the SIU in this regard," he says.