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