Guptas eye government's new propaganda newspaper

The Gupta family want to celebrate the work of Mpumalanga premier David Mabuza's provincial government with a new taxpayer-funded daily newspaper expected to cost millions of rands to run.

Tender documents for the project, which the Sunday Times has seen, bear striking similarities to a proposal made by the Gupta-owned newspaper The New Age in September last year.

The newspaper already makes millions from government departments and state-owned companies that sponsor its breakfast briefings.

In her State of Capture report former public protector Thuli Madonsela flagged some of the contracts the Guptas had with state entities such as Denel, Transnet, SAA and the SABC for further investigations.

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According to Mpumalanga government internal documents, the draft terms of reference for the tender state that the proposed daily newspaper would provide prominent coverage of the programmes of the provincial administration and would be distributed to all municipalities in the province.

All provincial government departments and municipalities in Mpumalanga would be expected to advertise in it.

Those with intimate knowledge of the matter said the draft proposal projected the contract to be worth more than R20-million over three years.

The draft document appears to have been tailor-made to suit a proposal made by TNA Media, owners of The New Age, at an Mpumalanga provincial government communicators forum in September last year.

Mabutho Sithole, the acting general manager of communication in Mabuza's office, said in an e-mail two months later: "Attached are terms of reference for a daily provincial publication for the province similar to what was presented by TNA at the last [forum] sitting. The advice of the accounting officer is that this type of publication must be put on an open tender for purposes of transparency."

Sithole sent the e-mail to all Mpumalanga government officials involved in communications, requesting their input for the draft terms of reference.

The Guptas' proposal was tabled by Moegsien Williams, editor-in-chief of The New Age, and MD Gary Naidoo.

The company said yesterday: "TNA does not comment on commercial relationships, existing, potential or speculative."

According to the agenda of the communicators forum in September, Williams and Naidoo were to present a "TNA Media provincial publication and progress report on the implementation of the Integrated Provincial Communication Plan".

In its proposals for the project, the province states that it would require a publisher to transfer skills to its employees and conduct workshops for its communication staff.

But provincial spokesman Zibonele Mncwango denied that Mpumalanga was looking to establish a new government newspaper with TNA Media. He said the province was willing to partner with any newspaper.

block_quotes_start The provincial government did not offer anything to The New Age, and allowing them to make presentations and proposals, just like any other media houses, should therefore not be viewed as an indication that we committed to do business with them block_quotes_end

"Their [TNA Media's] proposal was for government news and that is the partnership we don't have. We are currently sharing a page with Limpopo [in The New Age] and it is not paid for. We would like to have prominence from page one to three of a newspaper.

"We wish to reiterate that the provincial government did not offer anything to The New Age, and allowing them to make presentations and proposals, just like any other media houses, should therefore not be viewed as an indication that we committed to do business with them," he said.

Mncwango said the acting director-general of the province, Thulani Mdakane, had directed Mabuza's office to issue an open tender for the 2017-18 financial year, in which all newspapers would be invited to bid.