New Age expenditure: Muthambi must be joking

1 February 2015

Minister Muthambi's defence today of government's R10 million expenditure on advertising in The New Age is laughable.

According to Muthambi, her Department used sophisticated software to guide it in its decision to allocate 11,2 % of government print ad spend on The New Age.

The Minister cited The New Age's "footprint" as the reason that disproportionately more was spent on it than other newspapers.

She must be joking.

The New Age has a mere 153,000 readers. The reason that so few commercial advertisers choose The New Age for their campaigns is because it reaches so few people compared to other publications.

Is Muthambi really suggesting that The New Age's "footprint" is as big as the Sowetan's with its 1,6 million readers across the country? Or that The New Age has a larger "footprint" than the Daily Sun with its 5,3 million readers in all provinces?

Does the Minister really expect us to believe that the decision to channel millions into The New Age had nothing to with the fact that the President's close friends, the Guptas, own it?

The people of South Africa know a scam when they see one. We demand real answers and real accountability for this sickening abuse of public money on a Zuma-aligned newspaper.

Statement issued by Gavin Davis MP, DA Shadow Minister of Communications, February 2 2015

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