Politics and policy: apartheid-era record, donations and lobbying

analysisAn online encyclopedia entry states that in a letter to F.W. de Klerk dated 17 August 1989, Ton Vosloo, then managing director of Die Nasionale Pers (now Naspers), reaffirmed the company's support for the National Party, reminded de Klerk of the company's R150,000 donation to the party before the 1987 elections and referred to a further R220,000 pledged ahead of the September 1989 general election. According to the entry, the letter ended with the words "our newspaper Beeld in the Transvaal is your ally and we trust that this formidable combination will wipe out the competition." The entry cites a 2017 news report on declassified documents; the letter itself is not in the retained record, and no response by Vosloo or Naspers to the published account of the letter was found. ¹

analysisThe same online encyclopedia entry states that in 1997 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission asked Die Nasionale Pers (the company now named Naspers) to make a submission about the media's role in the years 1960 to 1994, that the company refused, and that 127 employees then each made an individual submission to the commission apologising for their role in the apartheid years, saying that the company's newspapers had formed an integral part of the power structure that implemented and maintained apartheid, for instance by supporting the National Party in elections and referendums. For this account the entry cites a 2017 media-history article and a Truth and Reconciliation Commission media release; the commission's own records and any correspondence from the company are not in the retained record. The entry also states that in 2015 the then Media24 CEO, Esmare Weideman, issued an apology concerning one employee's experience of separate facilities, and that this was not an unqualified apology for Naspers's role in supporting apartheid; the news report of 25 July 2015 that the entry cites for this is headlined "Naspers apologises for its role in apartheid". No finding of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission concerning the company, and no later step on this record, was found in the retained record. ¹

analysisNews reports on the Electoral Commission of South Africa's (IEC) quarterly party-funding reports record a donation of R1m by Naspers to each of two parties in 2021. According to a report on the IEC's second-quarter disclosure report, which covered donations made from July to September 2021 ahead of the 1 November 2021 municipal elections, Naspers contributed R1m to the Democratic Alliance. According to a report on the IEC's third-quarter Political Party Funding Declaration Report, published in February 2022, Naspers gave exactly R1m to the African National Congress (ANC) on 19 November 2021; that IEC report covered private contributions of just over R46m declared by 11 parties for September to December 2021, and Naspers's donation was the third-largest to the ANC in that quarter, after R15m from the Batho Batho Trust and R5.9m from Harmony Gold Mining. The IEC said that section 9(3) of the Political Party Funding Act 6 of 2018 requires registered parties to disclose donations above R100 000 made by a single donor to a single party in a financial year, and that the Commission must publish the disclosed donations. ^{1 2}

analysisAccording to a transparency aggregator's reproduction of the EU Transparency Register, Prosus is registered under identification number 891417815208-71, first registered on 9 December 2014, with a head office at Gustav Mahlerplein 5, Amsterdam, and an EU office at Rue du Commerce 31, Brussels; the entry describes Prosus as established in September 2019 through the listing of the Naspers Group's international internet assets on Euronext Amsterdam. In the entry as it stood on 3 March 2021, Prosus declared EU lobbying costs of €150,000 for the financial year April 2019 to March 2020 and 0.25 full-time-equivalent lobbyists, and listed its main EU files targeted as the digital economy, competition, taxation, foreign direct investment, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and the gig economy. The entry lists Prosus's affiliations as the European Internet Forum, the European Policy Centre, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Centre for Information Policy Leadership, the American European Community Association and Fairsearch, and declares no member organisations. The register card also lists Caroline Greer among the lobbyists with European Parliament accreditation under the Prosus registration, with an accreditation running from 26 May 2026 to 26 May 2027. ¹

analysisThe aggregator's card for the Prosus registration lists 22 meetings with the European Commission: high-level meetings (Commissioners, Cabinet members, Directors-General) published from December 2014 to December 2024, and meetings with officials holding management functions published since 1 January 2025. The card states that the meeting information comes from the Commission, not from the registrant, and that some meetings appear to be listed twice. On 26 May 2025 in Brussels, Prosus took part in a meeting with the cabinet of European Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra (cabinet member Katarina Koszeghy) on the need and prospects for simplifying Pillar 2, in particular in light of the situation with the United States; the other lobbyists recorded were Ernst & Young Core Business Services BV, Heineken N.V., ENEL SpA, Iberdrola, Repsol S.A. and Novartis International AG, and a meeting on the same subject on the same day with the Directorate-General for Taxation and Customs Union is also listed. On 30 June 2025 in Brussels, Prosus met the cabinet of European Commission Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen (cabinet member Silvia Bartolini) on AI policies, with Flint Europe recorded as another lobbyist at that meeting. ¹

analysisTwo meetings listed under the Prosus registration took place in Brussels in December 2025. The first, on 1 December 2025, is described as an introduction between the CEO of Naspers South Africa, who is an executive director on the Naspers board, and the European Commission's Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CNECT), attended by Director-General Roberto Viola and Deputy Director-General Thomas Skordas. On 2 December 2025, according to the register card, Prosus met Carlota Reyners Fontana, a Director in the European Commission's Directorate-General for Competition, on competition policy, the Merger Guidelines and the Digital Markets Act (DMA). ¹

analysisIn the US, a nonprofit lobbying tracker that compiles US Senate Office of Public Records disclosures lists Naspers Ltd as a federal lobbying client in the industry category Electronics Mfg & Equip, with total spending of US$60K for 2019, all of it attributed to subsidiaries (direct spending US$0). The figures are the tracker's calculations from Senate lobbying disclosures; the underlying filings and the subsidiaries concerned are not in the retained record. ²

analysisNaspers states that it aims to give input to tax policymakers and stakeholders through submissions to public consultations and direct engagement at national level in all its markets and at international level (UN, OECD), that it supports a level playing field in which local, regional and global companies are subject to the same taxes, and that since 2019 it has supported the work of the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework on BEPS towards a global solution for the international tax system. Its tax page publishes comment letters submitted to the OECD jointly by Naspers and Prosus on the Unified Approach (Pillar 1), dated 12 November 2019, and on GloBE (Pillar 2), dated 2 December 2019, and a Prosus–Naspers comment letter on Pillar One dated 19 August 2022. ¹

analysisPending a global solution, Naspers states, local digital services taxes (DSTs) should be profit-based or, if revenue-based, allow companies with a local business model that already pay local taxes on revenue and profits to credit them against other taxes; it says it has engaged with international and local policymakers on plans to introduce DSTs in its priority markets. Naspers also states that it began collaborating in 2017 with Capabuild, a public-private partnership that provides tax training to tax authorities, policymakers and other government officials in the global south, and that it supports Capabuild's aim of improving the understanding of global taxation. ¹

analysisA member profile published by a business council states that Phuthi Mahanyele-Dabengwa, who joined Naspers as South Africa CEO in July 2019, sits on the board of the Cyril Ramaphosa Foundation, chaired the Audit and Risk Committee of the Kagiso Shanduka Trust in 2016 and was appointed to its Board of Trustees in 2017. The profile describes the trust as a joint organisation of the Cyril Ramaphosa Foundation and Kagiso Trust focused on whole-school development. ¹