Manyi defends R8m adspend on Gupta paper
FORMER government spokesperson Mzwanele Manyi has defended the massive funding of the Gupta media empire through advertising by government. Manyi was giving testimony at the Zondo commission of inquiry into state capture yesterday.
His evidence related to his tenure as Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) chief executive between 2011 and 2012. During the period, The New Age newspaper – then owned by the Guptas – received around R8 million of the R194m GCIS media advertising budget.
Manyi said government had chosen to back the newspaper because it offered a different narrative, was not hostile towards government and was “accurate”. He denied the mainstream media was sidelined in the process.
“The narrative out there is that TNA was gobbling up all government money. My response here is to show what they got‚ but let’s not create the impression that this newspaper gobbled up all of government advertising.”
Manyi – a close Gupta ally who bought the family’s media assets when they left the country – poured cold water on the testimony of other witnesses, who implicated the Guptas and former president Jacob Zuma in state capture allegations.
These included former GCIS head Themba Maseko, Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan and former deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas.
“People here have been very poetic without producing evidence. I don’t know if you can implicate people purely based on poetry.
“I am struggling to convict people based on poetry. As I sit here and now, I can’t point to any piece of evidence that anybody here put on this table, but I know a lot of lyrics,” Manyi said.
He called Gordhan’s evidence to the commission – which related to his tenure as finance minister under Zuma – very poor and lacking in credibility.
“I came here very excited. I booked the whole day to listen to Mr Gordhan because I thought, because he was a minister of finance, he is going to have tangible information and a paper trail. “I sat here and lost concentration.” The controversial Gupta family was being .treated differently and unfairly, he added. “If the Guptas are found to have done anything wrong, they must suffer the full wrath of the law, but the law must be blind,” he said.
Earlier, Treasury’s chief director for communications Phumza Macanda testified about the period when former finance minister Nhlanhla Nene was sacked by Zuma and replaced by Des van Rooyen. “We were in shock. There was almost a sense of mourning within Treasury. A lot of us did not know how to make sense of developments.”
Macanda testified that Van Rooyen’s adviser, Mohammed Bobat, had instructed her on their first encounter that all future statements she drafted had to go through him.