Muthambi in firing line over New Age adverts

For more:

• City Press: Muthambi's R1.6m New Age ads were 'irregular'... City Press reports the Department of Communications is set to declare that about R1.6m spent by Minister Faith Muthambi on a spread of adverts in one edition of The New Age extolling the Free State government was irregular expenditure.
  

  Faith Muthambi, back in the firing line... again. (Image: GCIS)

  City Press reports that the latest spat comes as the battle between Muthambi and senior managers in her department intensifies.

  Meanwhile...

  DA says Muthambi must come clean on The New Age adverts:

  The DA's Gavin Davis, Shadow Communication Minister, referring to the City Press report that Minister Faith Muthambi spent R1.6m on a single set of advertisements in The New Age, says that this expenditure did not go through the proper approval processes and Muthambi needs to explain.

  Says Davis: "This follows similar allegations in the Mail & Guardian on 6 February - allegations that have been flatly denied by Communications Director-General, Donald Liphoko.

  "In the Communications Portfolio Committee meeting of 17 February," says Davis, "I asked Mr Liphoko whether R1.6m had been spent on a single advert in The New Age, without sign off by the Director-General. He replied that the allegations were false.

  "The City Press report suggests that the allegations are not going away.

  I will therefore be submitting questions in Parliament to determine:

  • The full expenditure on advertisements in The New Age since Minister Muthambi assumed office in May last year; and
    
  • Who approved the expenditure of each advert and proof thereof.
    
  • There is clearly a tendency amongst some senior figures in the Department of Communications to throw money at The New Age.

  Davis says that in January the DA revealed that, in the previous financial year, the Department of Communications spent R10.2m or 11% of its total print advertising budget on The New Age. See Minister explains ad spending - which was refuted by Davis. This was despite the paper's small readership of 153,000 people. By comparison, significantly less (R7.8m) was spent on the Daily Sun, for example, which has a huge readership of 5.3 million people.

  "The only possible explanation for government's disproportionate advertising expenditure on The New Age is President Zuma's close relationship with the newspaper's owners, the Gupta family.

  "Such expenditure is an abuse of public money for political purposes. The DA will not stop until it has fully exposed the practice of propping up media outlets that guarantee favourable coverage to the President and his allies," says Davis.