Naspers chairman Koos Bekker has upset people in the English villages of Bruton and Castle Cary. Residents say he keeps buying land and businesses around his Newt Hotel in Somerset, MyBroadband reported.
According to The Guardian, Bekker and his wife Karen Roos have clashed with locals over their growing estate. The couple has also bought several small businesses in the area.
The Newt started as a 2,000-acre working farm. Bekker and Roos bought it in 2013 and turned it into a luxury hotel that opened in 2019. They have since added another 700 acres around it.
Their other buys in the area include a deli, a beauty parlour, local pubs, old farmhouses and Yarlington Lodge.
Locals complained about the hotel’s use of pesticides. They also said The Newt was taking over the nearby villages and pushing up prices at businesses that people have loved for decades.
Some farmers and residents claimed that new boreholes and water drilling on the estate had dried up local streams and parts of the River Brue. They said new roads had made flash floods worse.
Some people were also unhappy with what they called “brazen” branding deals. In 2024, the local train station was renamed “Castle Cary for the Newt”.
The station also got a trackside cafe called Creamery. Afternoon tea is served there in an old Pullman carriage for £45 a person.
The “for the Newt” part of the station sign is not very large. Even so, a local food guide said the renaming came close to colonisation.
Other residents welcomed the money the couple has spent. They pointed to more tourists and the repair of old buildings that had been left to fall apart.
The Newt said it employs more than 650 local people. It said it cares for the environment and wants good relations with the community.
The hotel built ponds to deal with stormwater. At least one resident who complained about flooding said she understood the problems had been fixed.
Bekker was born in Potchefstroom in 1952 and grew up on a maize farm. He studied at Stellenbosch University and later did an MBA at Columbia Business School in New York.
His MBA thesis was the idea for M-Net, which launched in October 1986. He became chief executive of Naspers in 1997 and took no salary, only share options.
In 2001, Naspers bought 46.5% of Chinese internet firm Tencent for about $32 million. By 2015, that stake was worth $65 billion, and at its peak it reached $200 billion.
Bekker and Roos also own Babylonstoren in the Cape Winelands, Blou in Keurboomstrand, Vignamaggio in Italy and Over-Amstel Boerderij near Amsterdam.
In Cornwall, they own The Story of Emily. It is the restored home of Emily Hobhouse, who exposed the concentration camps of the Anglo-Boer War.
Source: this article is based on reporting by MyBroadband. Image: MyBroadband. Written with the help of AI and published by the Tzaneen Voice Technology desk. See our Editorial Standards.
Werner Jacobs covers technology for Tzaneen Voice. Werner reports on mobile networks, data prices, internet access, smartphones, apps, AI, cybersecurity and South African tech companies. Each story explains what a new product, price change or policy means for ordinary users in South Africa.