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
nora
(Nora)
#1