Mzwanele Manyi has defended government advertising spend on media entities linked to the Gupta family when he was head of the Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) in 2011 and 2012.
Manyi told the commission of inquiry into state capture on Monday that if anybody accused him of encouraging government ad-spend to be diverted to the Gupta-owned The New Age (TNA) newspaper, he would not deny it.
"If anyone was to come here and say Manyi encouraged me, I would not come here and deny that. Government has invested in a lot of equipment. A lot of money has been spent by government to ensure they use media as a partner ... but media is not of the same mind," he said.