{"id":33353,"date":"2013-03-11T12:33:46","date_gmt":"2013-03-11T10:33:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=33353"},"modified":"2013-03-11T12:46:27","modified_gmt":"2013-03-11T10:46:27","slug":"free-state-govt-website-saga-deepens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/33353\/free-state-govt-website-saga-deepens\/","title":{"rendered":"Free State Govt website saga deepens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Patricia Kopane\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/forum\/showthread.php\/7608-Patricia-Kopane\">Patricia Kopane<\/a>, <a title=\"DA\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/forum\/showthread.php\/1696-DA-Democratic-Alliance\">DA<\/a> Leader in the Free State, has accused Free State Premier <a title=\"Ace Magashule\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/forum\/showthread.php\/7609-Ace-Magashule\">Ace Magashule<\/a> of using government marketing contracts to channel millions of public funds to the company who was contracted to build the R140 million Free State provincial government website.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn exchange for this enrichment, the Letlaka Group, headed by businessman Tumi Ntsele, is selling the Premier\u2019s image to the public during a time of service delivery collapse in the Free State,\u201d Kopane said in a statement on Monday (11 March).<\/p>\n<p>It was reported last week that the Free State provincial government spent R140 million on its website. However, the department claimed it was actually R40 million for a total of 38 websites, and not only one.<\/p>\n<p>The DA alleged that, over the past three years, Premier Magashule and his Director General, <a title=\"Elzabe Rockman\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/forum\/showthread.php\/7610-Elzabe-Rockman\">Elzabe Rockman<\/a>, have awarded several lucrative government advertising contracts to Mr Ntsele under irregular circumstances.<\/p>\n<p>The political party noted how Ntsele\u2019s wealth has been created overnight in the process, transforming his company from a small start-up to a group with several communications arms:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>R2.6 million<\/strong> was paid to Letlaka for event management of the Premier\u2019s 2009 State of the Province address.<\/li>\n<li>A <strong>R4.175 million<\/strong> advertising contract was awarded to Letlaka-run The Weekly newspaper without going to tender. The DG, Me Elzabe Rockman signed the deal in June 2010 while she was still the Secretary of the Legislature.<\/li>\n<li>All government advertising was centralized to the Premier\u2019s Office in November 2010, with Letlaka Communications being awarded a <strong>R300k,000<\/strong> per month contract for printing and distribution of government marketing material.<\/li>\n<li>In the past 3 months, the Free State government spent an estimated <strong>R1.6 million<\/strong> on adverts in Letlaka-owned The Weekly. Standard rates were used for this estimate. During the period 30 November 2012 to 8 March 2013, the Free State government placed 88 adverts in just 10 editions of The Weekly.<\/li>\n<li><strong>R12 million<\/strong> a year is spent on Letlaka-managed Hlasela TV, which is broadcast to 100 public buildings in the province.<\/li>\n<li>The massively inflated <strong>R140 million<\/strong> website tender was awarded to Letlaka as part of a consortium, even though there were cheaper bidders .<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>According to the DA, besides this enrichment of Letlaka, the Premier\u2019s Office is looking to build an expensive propaganda media network in the Free State including:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A <strong>R12 million<\/strong> annual spend on Hlasela TV, the Premier\u2019s propaganda channel.<\/li>\n<li>Three new propaganda newspapers to be launched by the Premier\u2019s Office.<\/li>\n<li>Community radio stations that are due to be launched soon.<\/li>\n<li>Six existing community stations that benefited from the R140 million website tender, suggesting their independence could be compromised.<\/li>\n<li>Massive amounts of government advertising spend is being used to prop up Letlaka-run The Weekly, a propaganda newspaper supportive of the Premier.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The DA said it has asked Public Protector <a title=\"Thuli Madonsela\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/forum\/showthread.php\/2621-Thuli-Madonsela\">Thuli Madonsela<\/a> to investigate ethics violations committed by Premier Magashule in his enrichment of Tumi Ntsele and the Letlaka Group.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe trust that the Public Protector will see justice done on this matter within the 30 day time period specified for ethics investigations,\u201d Kopane said.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">More on the Fress State government<\/h3>\n<p><a title=\"Govt defends \u201cR40 million\u201d websites\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/32888\/govt-defends-r40-million-websites\/\"><strong>Govt defends \u201cR40 million\u201d websites<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"R140 million for government website\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/32742\/r140-million-for-government-website\/\"><strong>R140 million for government website<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Controversial govt website to be probed\" href=\"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/33027\/controversial-govt-website-to-be-probed\/\"><strong>Controversial govt website to be probed<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The DA has accused Free State Premier Ace Magashule of using government marketing contracts to channel millions of public funds to the company who was contracted to build a R140m website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":20450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[5332,1329,5333,26,5331,1967],"class_list":["post-33353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-ace-magashule","tag-da","tag-elzabe-rockman","tag-headline","tag-patricia-kopane","tag-thuli-madonsela"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33353"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33359,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33353\/revisions\/33359"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}