In 1984 in South Africa, it was hard to be optimistic about the future of commercial media. Newspaper companies faced an economy in decline, escalating insurgency, and the threat of television. It was then that Ton Vosloo, new MD of the establishment Afrikaner publishing house Nasionale Pers, received a call from a young MBA student with an idea for launching pay television in South Africa.

Almost thirty years later, that young man, Koos Bekker, has played a key role in the transformation of the South African media, dominated today by household brands like DsTV, M-Net, Supersport and M-Web. Bekker also built Nasionale Pers, a one-time apartheid relic, into a giant that dwarfs rival media companies in South Africa, and is big and confident enough to operate on a global scale.

Bekker is famous for having refused to take a salary or benefits. Yet this year, his shares could earn him a billion rand. In this MampoerShort, Anton Harber provides the first ever inside look at how Bekker operates, what makes him such a visionary manager, how he handles crises, and what his colleagues think of him.