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
nora
(Nora)
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