Gangster State

by Pieter-Louis Myburgh

  The premier’s office now wielded an extremely powerful weapon. It could determine how the province’s entire media budget would be spent. While it was bound to favour people close to Magashule, more importantly it could also withhold vital advertising revenue from media outlets that were possibly viewed as too critical and too independent.

  The provincial government’s new ‘implementing agent’ for media services was quick to flex its procurement powers. In April 2010, Magashule’s office issued tenders for ‘public information’, ‘media bulk buying services’, ‘printing and distribution services’ and the ‘provision of event management services’. 4 One of the benefactors of this set of contracts was businessman Setumo ‘Tumi’ Ntsele, whose company,

  Letlaka Communications, was appointed as the exclusive printer and distributor of provincial newsletters in August 2010. 5 Letlaka also clinched a contract to provide the province with event management services.6

  The Treasury report found that the establishment of a centralised

  ‘implementing’ unit for media services within the premier’s office was unlawful, and that the contracts awarded to Letlaka were therefore also in breach of the relevant legislation. According to the report, ‘all of the other Provincial Departments, which purported to appoint the Premier’s Office as their implementing agent, based on the direction of the Premier’s Office, also contravened the applicable Legislative Framework’. 7

  The Treasury investigators called for ‘a more in-depth investigation into Letlaka’s business in order to determine whether or not there may be financial misconduct, which may lead to criminal charges’. 8 There seemed to have been some solid grounds for their suspicions. Dan Kgothule, a former MEC for sport, arts and culture in the Free State, later claimed that Ntsele had tried to bribe him with a 30 per cent share in Letlaka in exchange for advertising his department in Letlaka’s publications. 9

  Addressing the National Council of Provinces in November 2013, then finance minister Pravin Gordhan discussed the report’s findings.

  ‘The report confirmed the existence of financial misconduct and elaborated on the nature and extent thereof, as well as the responsible parties within the department of the premier,’ he said. ‘Details were provided in the report together with the recommendation that the department of the premier should lay criminal charges with the SAPS

  against the implicated parties. ’10

  Magashule’s office took no such action. Instead, the premier claimed ignorance of the Treasury report. ‘The Premier is not aware of any recommendations which were made to the effect that criminal charges should be instituted against any official following the so-called Letlaka investigation,’ he wrote in a reply to Roy Jankielsohn, the DA’s leader in the Free State provincial legislature. 11

  Ntsele’s printing and event management contracts were just the start of his lucrative relationship with Magashule’s government. In 2011, a consortium headed by the businessman won a controversial tender to design and develop websites for various provincial departments, municipalities and state-owned entities in the Free State. The contract was reportedly worth a staggering R120 million.12 The project was later suspended amid a public outcry over the exorbitant costs, but Ntsele and his partners nevertheless bagged at least R48 million. 13

  According to one report, the province spent as much as R95 million on the websites, although it is not clear whether this entire amount was paid to Ntsele’s consortium.14

  Several tech experts have described the project as a gigantic rip-off, seeing as the web pages were built on simple WordPress templates that required little design work. 15 There has been no shortage of calls for the police to probe the deal, but such requests have apparently fallen on deaf ears. I conducted a small probe of my own, and I did not have to dig all that deep to unearth some red flags. The consortium that won the website contract consisted of Cherry Online-Design, of which Ntsele is the sole director, Ikamva ICT and Jagganaut Trading and Projects. The latter company’s sole director is Kenneth Thandiwe Mpembe, who, according to company records, hails from the northern Free State town of Sasolburg. Mpembe also happens to have business

  links to Magashule’s son, Tshepiso. Mpembe and Tshepiso were co-directors of BMMW Liquor Trading and Projects, as well as of a shelf company called Friedshelf 1076, company records revealed.

  Apart from the website debacle, Ntsele is also known for being the owner of The Weekly, a provincial newspaper that forms part of his Letlaka group. After the centralised media unit was established in Magashule’s office, The Weekly became one of the foremost benefactors of government advertising revenue, along with the Gupta-owned The New Age. In its 2013 report, Treasury noted that ‘ The Weekly seems to be funded almost solely by the Free State government, in particular the Department of the Premier, as very little commercial advertising could be identified’. 16 In exchange for such favourable treatment, The Weekly seemingly transformed itself into Magashule’s personal mouthpiece.

  The newspaper was distributed for free and could be picked up at the offices of all major government departments, municipalities and other state organs in the province, among other distribution points. The fact that the publication was readily available to most government officials and employees made it a powerful tool of influence within the province’s hallways of power. An assessment of The Weekly’s reportage over a period of about six years allowed me to conclude that Ntsele’s publication indeed amounted to little more than a propaganda machine for Magashule and his political allies. When The Weekly was not singing the premier’s praises, it was attacking his political foes.

  Magashule’s would-be challengers from 2012’s Regime Change group, other adversaries and even rival media publications all landed in The Weekly’s crosshairs. In the process, the publication consistently ran afoul of journalistic ethics and best practice.

  Here is perhaps the most shocking example of the paper’s questionable reportage. In March 2011, the Sowetan broke the story about Magashule’s alleged assault of two ANC branch members in Winburg, as referred to in the previous chapter. 17 More than a year later, in May 2012, The Weekly published a story under the headline

  ‘Ace plot revealed’. 18 The report opened with a quote from Joel Maleka and Mzwanele Moletsane, the two men who had laid charges of assault against Magashule following the alleged fisticuffs. ‘We are sorry, we did not want to open a case, and we love our chairman [Magashule],’

  they told the paper during ‘an exclusive interview’. Maleka and Moletsane apparently admitted to The Weekly that ‘they were promised jobs and money if they acted against the ANC provincial chairperson’. 19 The article continues: An investigation conducted by The Weekly then established that the allegations by the two were nothing but a conspiracy aimed at tainting Magashule’s reputation.

  This was after several high profile sources who were present at the meeting confirmed that Magashule never assaulted the duo as per media reports … The two have now realised that the senior ANC

  leaders who offered them bribes were sworn enemies of Magashule who wanted to use the incident to embarrass him. 20

  The article did not reveal the names of the ‘senior ANC leaders’ behind the alleged plot, but it included this little afterthought: ‘They [Maleka and Moletsane] made it clear that no one pressured them to spill the beans to The Weekly about the plot. ’21

  It would have been a fantastic scoop, if only it were true.

  I managed to get hold of Maleka in August 2018. He told me that he was never involved in a plot to smear Magashule’s reputation. He was

  also adamant that the alleged fracas at the branch meeting did happen.

  Most troublingly, Maleka claimed that he had not spoken to The Weekly at all. He was reluctant to discuss the issue, but said he could only remember at the time having talked to either the Sunday World or the Sunday Sun. According to Maleka, he and Moletsane withdrew their complaints against Magashule after discussions with the premier.

  ‘We
sorted things out, everything is fine now,’ he told me. He did not want to provide further details on how the matter was resolved.

  I asked Ntsele whether his newspaper had fabricated the ‘plot’. He did not respond to any of my queries about his business dealings in the Free State or his alleged friendship with the former premier.

  Another early ‘scoop’ by The Weekly was a front-page lead in late 2011 that detailed an alleged plot to ‘assassinate’ Magashule. 22 The story was wafer-thin in terms of its sourcing and it lacked concrete evidence that a plot really existed. It was also strangely reminiscent of similar claims that had been circulated about Jacob Zuma since at least 2007. 23 Zuma and his allies propagated such claims to great effect to paint the former president as a victim and thereby bolster his support at key moments in his scandal-ridden career as a politician.

  Then, in early 2012, as the ANC was starting to prepare for that year’s elective conference in Mangaung, Ntsele’s newspaper followed up with a report headed ‘Inside regime change war room’. The piece outlined a series of dubious tactics used by the Regime Change faction in an attempt to get rid of Magashule and Zuma. Yet one of their main sources was Magashule himself, a fact The Weekly was astonishingly candid about: After months of painstaking investigations and extensive interviews with ANC branch members and chairperson [Magashule], The Weekly can reveal the diabolical and delusional modus operandi

  employed by the Regime Change in its endeavour to dislodge the current leadership from the state and party hegemony. 24

  Furthermore, according to the paper, Magashule was not only the target of an assassination plot, he was also the victim of an elaborate smear campaign designed to tie his name to political assassinations: The Weekly has been reliably informed by provincial intelligence sources about plots being hatched to eliminate prominent political rivals of the current provincial ANC leadership. The aim is to use such assassinations to win public sympathy, and smear and discredit the current provincial leadership, especially Ace Magashule. 25

  At the time, the Mangaung metro was wracked by service-delivery protests in the Thaba ’Nchu and Botshabelo areas outside Bloemfontein. In its report, The Weekly claimed that the Regime Change group had hijacked the residents’ legitimate grievances to

  ‘embarrass and discredit the incumbent provincial leaders’. 26

  As the Free State provincial conference drew closer, The Weekly’s reports on the Regime Change faction became wilder and more unbelievable. ‘Terror campaign unmasked,’ screamed one of its headlines from May 2012. In the article, the newspaper claimed it had obtained a report compiled by the party’s Mangaung region

  ‘authenticating allegations of a nefarious plot involving violence, intimidation, and formation of illegitimate ANC branches by Regime Change leaders and members’. The Weekly insisted that the document corroborated its earlier revelations about the Regime Change group’s

  ‘war room strategy’. One of the paper’s main sources for the article, apart from the Mangaung region report, was ‘a key lobbyist close to the Magashule re-election campaign’. 27

  Sometimes the propaganda carried by The Weekly was laughably obvious. In November 2011, the paper published a letter from Steve Nale, who hailed from Magashule’s hometown of Parys. Nale was angry with other media outlets’ ‘unfounded attacks’ on the premier. He scoffed at the corruption allegations that swirled around Magashule’s administration and described the premier as a champion of the poor.

  ‘We will need a space bigger than this to showcase Free State government’s achievement under the leadership of Magashule,’ he wrote. ‘[W]herever you go many of our people views [ sic] him as a saviour … I never said a saint … but a true embodiment of the aspirations of our people. ’28

  On closer inspection, Nale was not a random member of the public. In fact, he was the spokesperson for the Ngwathe local municipality in Parys, where Magashule’s wife was a senior manager. The Weekly did not disclose this information, at least not in the letter’s online version.

  There are even more comical examples of The Weekly’s pro-Magashule propaganda. In March 2015, it ran an ‘Open letter to Ace Magashule’ from Tiisetso Makhele. ‘I greet you in the name of the organisation you lead, the ANC, and on behalf of the people of the Free State,’ the letter began. ‘Like the biblical Moses, you won people’s hearts behind your vision of [Operation] Hlasela … Premier Magashule, I am proud to have a leader like you. As a Free State citizen, I have confidence that under your watch and leadership, the people of our province are safe.’ Later, Makhele remarked: ‘I know that many will question my intention in writing this open letter. In fact, I know that some will even accuse me of attempting to solicit benefits from you … If you happen to read this piece, by some accident, please know that I ask of you no favour.’ He concluded his love letter by

  imploring, ‘Mr Premier, please live long, for the benefit of our people. ’29

  At the time, Makhele, a regular columnist for The Weekly since at least 2012, was working at the Free State branch of the South African Local Government Association (SALGA). A few months after The Weekly published his open letter, Makhele was appointed as Magashule’s new spokesperson, replacing Makalo Mohale, who was moved to the Free State Department of Human Settlements. 30 Makhele, who stayed on as the spokesperson for current Free State premier Sisi Ntombela, says his appointment was in no way influenced by the open letter. ‘My deployment at [the] Premier’s office was a decision of the ANC, not of the former Premier,’ he insisted.

  While The Weekly kept up its flattering and uncritical reporting on Magashule and his administration, a few of the province’s other news outlets remained committed to holding the premier to account. Because Ntsele seemingly formed part of Magashule’s capture network, the Letlaka group and its affiliated entities inevitably featured in rival publications’ news reports. In response, The Weekly sometimes lashed out at its competitors in ‘exposés’ of its own, but these reports fell well short of the South African Press Code’s benchmarks for acceptable journalism.

  In November 2017, the Afrikaans daily Volksblad revealed that Magashule’s government had splurged R95 million on the contentious website contract that had been awarded to Ntsele’s consortium in 2011. 31 A few weeks later, The Weekly retaliated with street posters and a front-page report that cast Volksblad in an unflattering light.

  ‘Volksblad covert agenda exposed,’ read the posters. The newspaper claimed that Volksblad was running a ‘cloak and dagger smear

  campaign’ aimed at discrediting and embarrassing Magashule, his administration and some of the black-owned businesses with which the province did business, including Ntsele’s companies. 32 The Weekly seemed to be accusing Volksblad of racism. ‘According to investigations carried out by this newspaper it has emerged that very senior white officials in the office of the Premier, under the pretext of being loyal to him, are intercepting government information and passing it on to Volksblad newspaper,’ the article claimed. 33 Volksblad submitted a complaint to the Press Ombudsman, who found that The Weekly had no facts to substantiate its story and was thus ordered to apologise to Volksblad. 34

  The Weekly’s most significant media battle occurred much earlier, however.

  In

  2011,

  Zimbabwean-born

  journalist-turned-media-

  entrepreneur Basildon Peta launched the now defunct Free State Times. ‘I was the main publisher in Lesotho, but I wanted to expand to South Africa,’ Peta told me during an interview in late 2018. ‘The Free State was the logical starting point to do so.’ He felt that the province’s media offering left ample space for a new publication. Volksblad was doing great work in terms of holding the Magashule administration to account, but it only catered for Afrikaans readers.

  After assembling a team of journalists and setting up shop in Bloemfontein, the first edition of the Free State Times hit the streets in April 2011. The publication was unflinchingly independent and critical ri
ght from the start. ‘Our very first front-page story ran under the headline “Premier Magashule under fire”,’ Peta recalled. ‘It detailed alleged irregularities involving the premier. In the months thereafter, we published story after story about Ace and his [alleged] corruption.’ The Free State Times tackled a series of government deals with companies

  and businesspeople who were allegedly close to Magashule, including Ntsele’s contentious website contract. Peta’s paper also investigated and wrote about the Magashule bloc’s dubious political manoeuvring within the ANC’s provincial structures.

  ‘We had been following the story of how legitimate [ANC] branches were sidelined, how Ace was elected as chairperson through [alleged]

  cheating, how delegates were [allegedly] paid off,’ Peta told me. ‘We published many reports on the branch-level manipulation that ensured Ace’s continued power.’ These hard-hitting reports soon earned the Free State Times a reputation as an uncompromising newspaper dedicated to exposing corruption in the province. This translated into promising circulation figures for a young publication.

  ‘We sold 15 000 copies of one edition in which we exposed a government contract that had been awarded to a businessman with links to Ace,’ said Peta. ‘The circulation began to increase at a steady rate.’ The publication also became a preferred channel for government officials and other individuals who wanted to tell their stories about problems in the Magashule-led government. ‘On some days, the reception area was full of people who wanted to share information about corruption,’ Peta explained.

  Given the Free State Times’s reporting on the website contract, it did not surprise Peta when Ntsele’s The Weekly began to attack his newspaper. The Weekly’s ‘Letters to the Editor’ section was routinely used for this purpose. Nale, in his letter, accused the Free State Times of ‘perpetuat[ing] a sinister agenda that projects Magashule as corrupt’.35 Another letter claimed that the Free State Times was controlled by ‘Regime Change handlers’, without providing a shred of evidence. 36