It was not long before such sentiments gained traction within the ANC’s formal structures. In March 2012, The Weekly reported that
‘ANC Youth League leaders have declared war against Free State Times, accusing the newspaper of waging an anti-ANC agenda’. The article quoted ANC Youth League Fezile Dabi regional secretary Phindile Motha as saying that her organisation supported the ANC’s controversial call for the establishment of a media tribunal, and that the Free State Times would be the first publication to appear before it. ‘We should seriously begin to probe as to who is funding this paper and its agenda,’ Motha told The Weekly. ‘In asking we should remember the info scandal of 1979 and we will certainly be guided to find answers. ’37 She seemed unaware of the irony of her comments. The so-called
information
or
Muldergate
scandal
involved
the
misappropriation of apartheid state funds for covert propaganda projects. In the Free State’s case, it was The Weekly that was being propped up with government funding, not the Free State Times.
The hostility was not confined to The Weekly’s pages. According to Peta, Free State Times reporters and staffers were exposed to intimidation and threats when they attended government press briefings and other events. ‘I once received a phone call from someone who told me I should go back to Zimbabwe,’ Peta told me. ‘Before he hung up, he asked me if I remembered what had happened to Noby Ngombane.’
But the biggest threat to the Free State Times’s continued existence was financial in nature. Peta told me Magashule effectively placed ‘an embargo’ on state advertising in his newspaper. It is something that clearly still irks him. ‘If we had received a fraction of The New Age’s government advertising revenue, we would have been fine,’ he said. ‘It
is simply unethical for bureaucrats to punish newspapers for criticising government.’
From the outset, Peta was less than optimistic about his gutsy publication’s chances of securing much revenue from Magashule’s government. Given the newspaper’s promising circulation figures, however, he had thought that the Free State Times would secure enough advertising income from the private sector. Things were not that simple. Peta and his colleagues were told that large companies and other businesses operating in the Free State had been pressured into boycotting his newspaper. ‘Potential clients told our advertising team that people from government had asked them not to support us,’ Peta claimed. ‘These companies were afraid of losing out on business with the provincial government, so they complied.’
A former advertising agent at the Free State Times told me the same story. This source gave me the name of a large retailer in Bloemfontein that initially agreed to advertise in the Free State Times but later backed out for alleged ‘political reasons’. I asked the retailer for comment. It admitted that it had placed one advertisement in the Free State Times before terminating its relationship with the new publication, but maintained that this was for purely commercial reasons. ‘We didn’t get much traction after our once-off advertisement and therefore decided not to make use of it again,’ the retailer maintained.
Peta cited other companies that, according to him, boycotted the Free State Times because of alleged pressure from Magashule’s administration. These included cellphone network giants and other major South African companies. Regardless of the reasons for these businesses not wanting to advertise in the Free State Times, the dual
snub from the private and public sectors soon pushed the newspaper towards the brink of bankruptcy. Peta had started the Free State Times with a cash injection from a foreign investor, and he needed to keep up with the loan repayments. He also had to protect his employees’ jobs.
In the end, he decided to do a deal with the devil, in a manner of speaking. One of his friends knew Ntsele. This person suggested that instead of closing down the Free State Times, Peta could enter into a partnership with Letlaka.
‘I did what a responsible publisher and businessman needed to do,’
Peta told me. In early 2013, he agreed to sell a controlling stake in his newspaper to Ntsele’s Letlaka.38 After that, government advertising revenue apparently started to roll in. But this money came at a great cost. ‘When we went into bed with Letlaka, we had to change the newspaper’s editorial policy,’ Peta explained. ‘We could no longer do stories that could be seen as being anti-Ace. It wasn’t a question of being pro-ANC, we had to be pro-Ace.’ Gone were the days of the Free State Times’s corruption exposés. The newspaper’s reports on Magashule and his administration instead began to look remarkably like The Weekly’s. For instance, in December 2013, the Free State Times ran two stories that depicted Magashule as a good leader (‘Hlasela has done wonders’ and ‘Premier orders jobs for widows’). 39
However, the marriage between the Free State Times and Letlaka did not last long. In 2014, Ntsele pulled out of the agreement after a series of disputes with Peta over how the business should be run. Peta once again had full control of his newspaper, but it was too late to save it.
‘Ntsele was the conduit for the government advertising revenue,’ Peta said. ‘After he left, we again had no revenue.’ The newspaper that once shone a light on corruption in the province finally closed for good in
2015.
Volksblad was apparently also subjected to an advertising boycott of sorts by Magashule’s administration. Gert Coetzee, the newspaper’s editor, told me they experienced a decline in government ad spend after Magashule became premier. Like Peta, Coetzee was critical of the provincial government’s strong financial support of The Weekly. ‘It’s not much different from the National Party’s info scandal, only nowadays it is done openly, and it doesn’t come across as a scandal any more,’ he quipped.
The Weekly was not the only media outlet that seemingly received advertising revenue in exchange for favourable coverage of the Magashule administration. As will be shown in the following chapter, the Guptas’ The New Age earned a significant portion of its advertising income from the Free State provincial government. I spoke to two former journalists about their experiences at the Guptas’ publication.
Both were adamant that Magashule had a direct line to the Guptas and that this relationship influenced the newspaper’s reportage.
Cathy Dlodlo, who now heads up radio station OFM’s newsroom, was one of The New Age’s early staffers after the Guptas launched the paper in 2010. Like most South Africans, Dlodlo at that stage had little knowledge of the wealthy brothers and their state-capture plans. She therefore tackled her job at The New Age as she would have done at any other publication. With her knack for investigative reporting, Dlodlo wrote stories that cast Magashule’s government in a bad light.
‘For example, I would get the auditor-general’s report on the province’s horrific finances and write about that,’ Dlodlo told me.
This quickly got her in hot water with the newspaper’s powerful owners. ‘I was asked to tone down my negative reports on Ace and the
province,’ she said. ‘The request first came from someone lower down.
But then Atul Gupta came through to Bloemfontein one day and spoke to me directly. He asked me to stop writing such stories, but I refused.’
The Guptas then tried to fire her for insubordination. Dlodlo took The New Age to court and won the case. The High Court in Bloemfontein ordered the Gupta-owned publication to pay out the remainder of her salary, 40 after which Dlodlo left the paper for good.
Another former The New Age reporter, who asked to remain anonymous, claimed that Magashule sometimes directly determined which stories or events would be included in the publication’s news diary. ‘I literally had to follow Ace around and create positive coverage on him,’ this journalist told me. ‘For instance, when he opened houses as part of Operation Hlasela, I needed to be there. He sometimes phoned me directly to tell me where I had to be.’
Magashule’s influence apparently also extended to the
public broadcaster. Thuso Motaung, a presenter at the SABC’s Lesedi FM
radio station, which reaches over three million listeners, is said to have been close to Magashule. According to my sources, Motaung often praised the former premier on air. As we will see in Chapter 21, Motaung travelled to Cuba with Magashule in early 2015.
One former SABC reporter claimed that Magashule also influenced the public broadcaster’s news diary for the region. Magashule allegedly instructed then SABC COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng to make a key appointment at the SABC’s regional office in the Free State. The source claimed the appointee ensured that Magashule received very good coverage. ‘On some days we had environmental issues or other stories on our diary, but, after Ace or one of his MECs called, the whole diary would change. We then instead had to run after the politicians and
cover their events,’ claimed the former SABC staffer.
Magashule’s grip on The New Age, The Weekly and the SABC’s local office ensured that a sizeable portion of the province’s population saw, read or heard only sanitised reports of his and his administration’s conduct.
PART V
ALL THE PRESIDENT’S PALS
13
Tea with Atul
The ANC’s 2012 elective conference in Mangaung reinforced the political dominance that President Jacob Zuma and his clique first established at Polokwane five years earlier. Buoyed by a 75 per cent backing from the party’s internal electorate, the Zuma faction cruised into a fresh five-year governance cycle with renewed self-assurance.
This unwavering confidence fuelled the audacity with which the president’s predatory associates in the business world started to loot the public purse. The next half-decade would see the Zuma-centred state-capture project mature before reaching its terrible climax. In the process, South Africa would experience some of its darkest moments.
Ace Magashule and his provincial government were at the centre of this depressing epoch. Directly after Mangaung, Magashule initiated the formation of what would become the most significant political power bloc during Zuma’s second term as party leader. He first teamed up with the North West ANC chairperson, Supra Mahumapelo, 1 who became that province’s premier not long thereafter. Mpumalanga strongman and premier David Mabuza joined later, and by 2015 the term ‘premier league’ began to appear in reports on this influential coalition. Political insiders in the Free State told me that Magashule was the ‘architect’ of this formation. Some of these sources moved very close to the premier during this period.
The premier league rallied behind Zuma and ensured that the scandal-ridden president survived attempts by frustrated members of the party’s NEC to oust him.2 This manoeuvring was political in nature,
but there were equally important financial dealings in play. If the business representatives in Zuma’s shadow state were to continue benefiting from dodgy government contracts, he needed to stay in power. His continued rule also ensured that the National Prosecuting Authority, the Hawks and other supposed bulwarks against the looting of state resources remained paralysed by the poison of political interference.
In this toxic environment, the Free State became one of the foremost sites of capture. For years, Magashule’s own patronage networks had operated mostly independently from role-players outside the Free State.
But around 2012, the Guptas and other businesspeople linked to Zuma began to infiltrate the province in earnest. Magashule evidently had no qualms about his boss’s friends feasting on Free State contracts along with his own associates. In fact, synergy and aligned interests were the order of the day. The nexus between Zuma, Magashule and the Guptas is a case in point.
One warm Saturday morning in late 2013, Ace Magashule knocked on the door of Thabo Manyoni’s Bloemfontein residence.
The arrival of the Free State premier at the home of the city’s mayor might ordinarily have drawn a fair amount of attention. But these were not ordinary circumstances. There were no bodyguards, no escort vehicles and none of the flashing lights that usually announce the arrival of top-level politicians like Magashule. The only clue that the visitor was someone important was the black, government-owned BMW SUV he was driving. The premier seemingly did not want any witnesses.
Manyoni had no clue why he had been asked to accompany his boss on a trip, he told me in an interview in mid-2018. Magashule had
merely told him to be ready to travel to Gauteng for an important meeting. Perhaps the mayor thought he was going to be taken to Luthuli House, the ANC’s headquarters in downtown Johannesburg.
As they progressed northwards on the N1 highway, Magashule and Manyoni mostly talked shop. The 2014 national and provincial elections were around the corner, and both men would be required to help convince the bulk of the Free State’s nearly 1.5 million registered voters3 to once again gift their inky crosses to the ruling party. There was also the issue of the lists the party needed to compile of candidates it would send to the provincial legislature and the National Assembly after the elections. It was issues such as these that dominated the conversation during the four-hour drive, leaving Manyoni without any hints as to where they were going.
When they arrived at Johannesburg’s southern edge, Magashule steered the BMW X5 past the exits that led to the city’s CBD. Manyoni could now rule out Luthuli House as a possible destination. The premier instead continued driving up the M1, the national highway’s four-lane tributary that snakes through the city’s affluent, forested core.
Before they reached the point further north where the two highways again merge, Magashule took an off-ramp. The black BMW now cruised westward on one of the area’s wider, tree-lined roads. After a couple of turns, the premier and the mayor entered Saxonwold, a suburb where the top-floor windows of double-storey homes peeked over tall gates and walls.
Magashule slowed as they reached a particularly large property. It was protected by a white, spiked fence perched atop an already imposing wall. This concrete bulwark stretched down the road for what seemed like hundreds of metres.
The premier turned the car onto a short, cobblestone driveway with a black gate. There was a guardhouse and several guards standing around, but the black SUV was promptly allowed onto the property. It seemed to Manyoni as if his boss had been there before.
They parked, and Magashule led the mayor up some steps and into the main entrance of one of the garish mansions that cluttered the expansive property. A male servant directed them to a sitting room with comfortable sofas. He also offered them tea, small cakes and cookies, a gesture that lent itself to what Manyoni perceived as a laid-back, informal atmosphere. But his comfort was short-lived.
They had not waited long before a chubby character with black hair and a moustache made his entrance. Manyoni thought he recognised the man’s face. Before the mayor could figure out if he had seen the man before, Magashule introduced him as Atul Gupta. ‘This is the person you will be working with,’ Magashule told their host after giving Manyoni a brief introduction.
The mayor did not know what that was supposed to mean, but his bafflement quickly gave way to disbelief as Magashule and Atul got into the details of a plan that had clearly been in the making for some time.
Magashule explained that he would vacate his position as Free State premier not long after the elections. Apparently, he was due to be included in President Jacob Zuma’s cabinet as the new national minister of communications. This was an important portfolio to Atul and his family, given their ventures in broadcasting and print media.
The plan was for Manyoni to become the new premier of the Free State. Atul told Manyoni that he viewed the province as an important partner in his family’s businesses. He also boasted about the power and
influence his family wielded within the ruling party and within Zuma’s government. The Guptas donated a lot of money to the ANC, he said, including generous donations to the party’s coffers in the Free State.
In fact, the Guptas could ‘invest’ R400 million in a plan to bring Bloemfont
ein’s decommissioned coal-fired power station back to life.
Some of this money could then be channelled towards the ruling party for the upcoming elections, Atul said.
Their host’s swagger swelled as he continued to talk. ‘If we call any cabinet minister right now, he or she will be here in an hour,’ he boasted.
Then came one of the not-so-subtle threats that the Guptas would later become notorious for issuing during such conversations. ‘We have files on cabinet ministers and other politicians in the basement,’ Atul told Manyoni.
The implication of this remark was not lost on the mayor. Government officials who refused to work with the powerful family would be dealt with by having their darkest secrets revealed to the world. All Manyoni had to do was ‘work with them’ once he became premier, Atul said.
One of the projects in the metro that the Guptas had their eyes on was the R11-billion business and residential node that was going up near Bloemfontein’s airport, Manyoni was told. 4
The family also desired more advertising revenue from Free State government departments and municipalities for their newspaper, The New Age. When Manyoni told him that these entities did not really have big advertising budgets, Atul responded: ‘It isn’t really about the money, it is about power.’
Magashule chipped in now and then in an effort to persuade Manyoni to warm up to their host. It must have been obvious to him and Atul
that the mayor was horrified.
When the premier excused himself to go to the bathroom, Atul told Manyoni that his ‘body language’ betrayed a lack of enthusiasm. ‘It doesn’t look like you want to work with us,’ he observed.
Given Manyoni’s apparent unwillingness to play along, conversation soon fizzled – but not before Atul made one last attempt to persuade him to join their ranks. He produced a large A4 envelope stuffed with cash and handed it to the mayor. This was for ‘organisational work’, Atul told him. A shocked Manyoni quickly handed the envelope to Magashule. He wanted no part in their murky dealings.
Gangster State Page 18