There is not the slightest hint of deceit in Prof Malema’s eyes and so when he says that the Media King printing press that will be installed at Tsodilo Printers in a week’s time is the only one of its kind in Africa, the writer foregoes the option of asking him if he would be willing to repeat that same statement under oath. That is because there is still plenty of time to tell whether this is honest-to-God truth or whether the speaker is blithely breaking the ninth commandment. In case of the latter, the church that borders the premises of the printing facility would definitely come in handy for purposes of repentance.
Based in Pilane, this project has taken Malema from Gaborone to New York to Dallas to Harare to Netherlands to Belgium to Germany to Indonesia as well as to Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town. Sealing the deal itself involved having to deal with a phalanx of lawyers spread out across three continents. During the interview, he dines out on at least two interesting tidbits of his travels and an experience at an Indonesian restaurant that he reproduces at entertaining length is one for the ages. When he ordered what the menu listed as “chicken and rice”, he was presented with a steaming plate of rice and fried eggs, whereupon he remonstrated with the waiter, telling him that his order had been botched up because he had actually ordered chicken and rice. “But that’s chicken and rice,” the waiter riposted defiantly. Come to think of it, the latter may have been right because a chicken is actually a fully evolved egg.
Another trip took Malema to a German town that is renowned for its supremacy in printing technology. This time he was accompanied by the Tsodilo Printers general manager, Andrew Dew, a South African with 35 years experience in the printing industry. By Malema’s account, the latter is a “tough negotiator” and during one meeting with the sellers of the printing press, negotiations dragged on into the night. Getting exasperated, a representative of the seller asked at one point: “Do you guys want us to give you this machine for free?”
In the end, the two parties agreed that Tsodilo Printers would get the machine and all of its necessary services . And so, more than a year after the deal with Machinery Care of Walwijk, Netherlands was sealed, the printing press finally arrives in Pilane on Wednesday. For the next two months, there will be a flurry of activity as work crews from three countries (Netherlands, South Africa and the United States) re-assemble the machine and its auxiliary units.
The plot of the Tsodilo Printers story gains purchase around the time that the company directors applied for a Citizen Entrepreneurial Development Agency (CEDA) loan to build a
printing warehouse. When the Agency said “No, you can’t”, they instead chose to listen to more enticing words similar to those that a then believable Barack Obama hustled back in 2008: “Yes, you can.” Armed with this conviction, they approached the Media Development Investment Fund in the United States which invests in independent media around the world and has, since 1996, “provided $130.9 million in affordable financing to more than 90 businesses in 32 countries with a history of media oppression.” In the southern African region, the Fund has also sponsored media projects in South Africa, Lesotho, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
MDIF was receptive to Tsodilo Printers’ proposal and the end result was that an almost vacant piece of tribal land in Pilane that once stared mournfully at a feeder road that connects Mochudi with the A1 Highway will be transformed into a hub of cutting-edge printing technology beginning next week.
Typically, the company had to contend with the lethargy of local organisations it had to deal with. The National Museum gave the project a green light because “nothing of archaeological significance was found at the proposed development area” but the consolidation of three plots into one was an uphill task that the company had not bargained for.
“We experienced a lot of frustration dealing with the Land Board. Today a file would be missing and the next day an officer needed to carry out some task would be away on leave. It was deeply frustrating and the whole Land Board process took two and a half years. A foreign investor would have long left,” Malema says of this ordeal.
Other parties associated with the project were also worried about the pace of progress. The Environmental Management Plan notes that “Mr. Phiri of DGL Architects is highly concerned with the delays experienced in the implementation programme.”
The press has already been shipped to Durban, will be transported by train to the Botswana Railways container terminal in Gaborone (“Gabcon” as it is called) before being ferried by truck to Pilane where it will be re-assembled by Machinery Care engineers. The mechanical and electrical dismantling of the equipment was done in the Netherlands after Tsodilo Printers reps had visually inspected it.
Save for finishing touches, construction of the warehouse is complete. On Wednesday afternoon when a Sunday Standard team visited the facility, electricians were perched on a stepladder in one corner of the press hall, completing terminal cabling work and the switch-back ramp on the front-end of the warehouse was being sluiced out with water in preparation for the arrival of the press. Explaining the latter, Malema says that the equipment is highly sensitive to foreign objects. Marked by a distinct, lacquered deep-grey patch on the bare floor, the press foundation is itself ready to accommodate the machine which weighs 100 tonnes, is 30 metres long and 3 metres wide and has a lifespan of 40 years.
When the engineers have re-assembled the press, the engineers will conduct white-paper testing following which the machine will be commissioned. The efficiency target specified in the contract with regard to this aspect is that the press shall produce good quality printing plates as per average European standards.
“We will be producing a United Kingdom-like quality of newspaper,” says Malema, adding that they had to do an extensive benchmarking exercise across various countries to decide on the most suitable system for their operation. According to him, locally available printing technology is far less evolved compared to that which Tsodilo Printers will be using. After the commissioning and production of the first sellable copies, staff will be given two weeks of training by a qualified printer.
Rolling outages (formerly known as “load shedding” but recently rechristened “maintenance work”) don’t seem to have ridden off into the sunset and so it is still a good idea to have a back-up power generator waiting behind the building for that dreaded back-to-the-Stone-Ages-moment. On Wednesday, a work crew from South Africa will install a generator whose 600 kVa output is enough to power both the press and other press hall operations. While the generator can pick up a split-second after the Botswana Power Corporation supply gives out, Malema says that it is still not sufficient to ensure that the press runs uninterrupted. As it is, a tonne of money has already been poured into the project and a much desirable uninterrupted power supply (UPS) system that is available in the US costs a whopping P1 million. Malema says that for now such cost would be unaffordable. The generator will be supported by a 1000-litre diesel tank and will not give off too much noise that could have the effect of souring relations with neighbours. Whilst Tsodilo Printers is an industrial area, there is residential property all around. Printing presses operate round the clock and Malema says care was taken to not disturb the peace at a time that residents would need it most.
First to roll off the presses will be Sunday Standard and its sister publication, The Telegraph, which are both published by Tsodilo Printers’ sister company, Tsodilo Services. Malema says that the press can print up to 40 000 copies per hour for a 32-page tabloid and half that number of copies for the same period of time for a broadsheet. Currently, Sunday Standard is printed in Johannesburg while The Telegraph is done in Gaborone and the Pilane press is expected to greatly improve the distribution and circulation performance.
Were it to print the two papers only, the press would be operating way under capacity but Tsodilo Printers is an enterprise that has been designed to operate at full capacity in order that investors can get returns on their investment.
“We are talking to some newspapers here. Some are very receptive but naturally would like to see the quality of the product before they can make any firm commitments,” Malema says, adding that the facility will also print books.
With its huge, near-First-World media operations, South Africa offers another potential market that Tsodilo Printers is eyeing. Publications from there enjoy huge patronage locally and one possibility that the company is seriously considering is to convince publishers to print and distribute their newspapers here as well as in nearby South African towns like Rustenburg and Mafikeng. That would be nothing out of the ordinary because international magazines like Time do the same sort of thing. However, the one challenge that Malema foresees is of limited times of border operations in Botswana impeding this goal.
Tsodilo Printers will function as an independent operation with a block of offices housing all supporting operations like administration, marketing and IT. Technologically, the second-most important station after the press will be the computer-to-press (CTP) room where a bank of desktop computers will receive electronic copy using specialised software. This information will then be transferred into the CTP system which uses three-phase electricity, water-based chemicals and water.
The Pilane printer comes into being at a time that environmental standards are getting ever more rigorous and Malema says that they had to jump through hoops to meet set standards. The company has acquired the Metaflix CTP-Ph-Control-R4-Universal System, a waste management and tracking system that manages and monitors CTP effluent without disposing of it into the Water Utilities Corporation sewer lines. The effluent will be discharged into a 10, 000-litre grey water tank, treated and used for gardening purposes. This system allows generators to safely discharge all types of thermal, violet and photopolymer CTP effluent by collecting, measuring and neutralising the pH levels of all waste using a specially formulated neutralising agent called MetaAid. The process eliminates handling, storage and hauling of waste chemicals as well as costs that would ordinarily come with having to undertake such tasks.
The contract with Machinery Care establishes the post of technical project manager who is responsible for the coordination of all technical activities in relation to the project. He is the first technical contact to Tsodilo Printers and is responsible for the supply of all project information as well as for communication between all parties and sub-contractors involved in the project. Communicating with a large stakeholder base ranged across the world in a cost- and time-effective manner part-explains why one office in the administration block will be fitted with teleconferencing facilities. Travel has already consumed a lot of time and money and the purpose of this facility is to virtually bring Pilane, New York and Walwijk into one room. In keeping with the times, the reception area has a toilet for people with disabilities.
Malema says that when Tsodilo Printers starts operating at the end of October it will, unless it gets more business, employ and maintain a 43-member staff for the first three years.
