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‘I’m not the owner or founder of Mara Phones’ – Chante Jantjies
The Mara Phones factory was opened in 2019 after R1.5 billion in funding. A year later Chante Jantjies opened her own store.
SABC news anchor Chanté Jantjies | Picture: Twitter
SABC news reader and former Miss SA Teen contestant Chante Jantjies has issued a statement distancing herself from the failed Mara Phones business after a report that the manufacturer’s Durban factory would be shutting down despite starting off with a R1.5 billion cash injection.
On Wednesday, My Broadband reported that South Africa’s first smartphone factory was going on auction.
According to the publication, The Mara smartphone assembly plant near Durban was opened by President Cyril Ramaphosa in October 2019 after the company got R1.5 billion in funding from Standard Bank and the Industrial Development Corporation.
It was also pushed as part of the president’s highly punted investment drive and the Mara Phones factory was expected to help create thousands of jobs.
So they employed 200 people and estimated that they could produce just over a million phones for the local market.
Two years later, everything in the facility is up for sale as funders try to recover their monies.
Plant, manufacturing and testing equipment, as well as smartphone components and the completed stored on-site, are among the items up for sale.
Why is Chante Jantjies being linked to Mara Phones?
SABC news reader Chante Jantjies found herself trending on Wednesday morning after Instagram-based blogs used her image in their reporting on Mara Phones due to the fact that she is listed as the owner of Maponya Mall’s Mara Phones store.
The store was launched in November 2020 and staff who work in the store are uncertain about their futures.
The store stocked the Mara S and MAra Z models which sold for between R3,000 and R4,000.
Speaking to ITWeb at the launch, Chante Jantjies sang the brand’s praises.
“Mara as a brand, the group brand, their brand strategy in respective countries, is that the countries where they have franchise stores have factories in those countries. I love the fact that it’s an international player and competitor, but it’s trying to make space within a local context, and one that wants to uplift and develop the countries in which they operate,” she told the publication.
“The main thing for me was just the fact that I’m able to part of a proudly-produced South African phone,” she added.
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Her involvement in the business was hailed as “black excellence” and now, she is being called a criminal by Twitter users who believe she defrauded the business of money and used it to live a lavish lifestyle.
Taking to Twitter after she initially deleted all her posts and locked her accounts, Chante denied being the founder or owner of the brand.
In a statement published on her Twitter account with no letterhead and no contact details for the company responsible, unnamed representatives of Jaintjies “noted reports and social media posts seeking to attribute the current reports about Mara Phones” to their client.
“We wish to place on record that our client is not the owner or founder of Mara Phones.”
The statement clarified that she merely invested in the Maponya Mall franchise and was not a shareholder in the company, nor was she involved in the day-to-day running of the company.
Her unnamed representatives also denied that she received any money from Mara Phones or its funders.
The statement concluded by barring reporters and bloggers from linking her to the company in reports, stating that this would “not be tolerated.”
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