Staffers at Mzwanele Manyi's Afro Worldview (DStv 405) were told on Monday to stay home from Tuesday as the day finally arrived that MultiChoice was cutting the channel, previously known as ANN7 and started by the Guptas, after its 5-year contract ran out and wasn't renewed.
Afro Worldview was set to go dark at 23:59 on Monday night as MultiChoice announced in January, with the channel that closed out Monday night, its final broadcasting night on DStv, with a discussion around virginity testing and "A, B and C-grade vaginas".
Employees at Afro Worldview said they were finally informed by Mzwanele Manyi on Monday during a meeting that Afro Worldview is going off the air.
It comes less than a month after the abrupt shutdown of Afro Voice, the newspaper previously known as The New Age that was taken over by Mzwanele Manyi's Afrotone Holdings through a vendor financing deal with the controversial Gupta family.
Mzwanele Manyi's Afrotone Media Holdings in June renamed The New Age as Afro Voice and ANN7 as Afro Worldview in an attempt to create distance from the tarnished brands mired in alleged Gupta corruption scandals as part of an announced "'strategic decision'' to take the media company "to greater heights".
Om Monday Afro Worldview staffers were told that they will be paid at the end of the month as planned.
There's been no statement from Afro Worldview on Monday about its shuttering that comes exactly 5 years after ANN7's utterly disastrous launch on 21 August 2013 on DStv. and that was recently recounted in Rajesh Sundaram's page-turner book, Indentured: Behind the Scenes at Gupta TV.
The Communication Workers Union (CWU) said it was disappointed at the way that Afro Worldview handled the channel's demise and that management were not more upfront with workers about what would be happening after Monday.
The Fedusa trade union said "we are concerned for the workers, however, it is difficult to ignore the propaganda history of the network and its previous owners".
Sometime on Saturday 18 August Mzwanele Manyi on Twitter posted a staff pic taken in the Afro Worldview studio, and pleaded: "Dear South Africa Please put this innocent team of Bread Winners in your prayers. They NEED their jobs."
MultiChoice on Monday reaffirmed to TVwithThinus what it announced earlier that Afro Worldview will be shut down on DStv on 20 August and said in response to a media enquiry that "our contract with Afro Worldview comes to an end today".
Afro Worldview closed out Monday night with a late-night discussion about virginity testing and talking about "A, B and C-grade vaginas".
"I know the lights are going off at the station but HTF is this allowed to air?" asked viewer Quinton Mtyala.
In a note to DStv subscribers, MultiChoice said it would make an announcement regarding the new TV news channel replacing Afro Worldview on 28 August.
