Following the recent number of articles over the past months, focusing on nepotism, irregular appointments, maladministration, and corruption within the Free State government, Step Up SA News has learned that senior government officials met on Monday, 29 November 2021 to discuss among other things the publication and series of articles.
This is after an article was published, stating that Free State Premier Sisi Ntombela’s daughter was made a deputy director at DESTEA despite having matric only.
Before that Step Up SA News reported how Premier Ntombela irregularly increased the salary of her alleged ally Bongo Nazo to the last notch of level 13 by instructing the senior manager claiming that Nazo was being poached by COGTA in a transfer arrangement though there were no supporting documents nor the transfer letter to support this, not forgetting the article on how the provincial Education department hired a convicted criminal to run its legal affairs despite a court judgement that declared him not “fit and proper”.
According to sources with intimate knowledge the high level meeting resolved to deploy State Security Agents to monitor all Step Up SA News platforms including tracing of sources.
What is shocking is that the provincial government is not addressing the maladministration Step Up SA News is uncovering but rather opts to go for whistleblowers.
There were attempts to hack the website in recent times and we took that for granded. However red flags were raised three weeks ago when DESTEA officials were asking questions about the publisher’s journalists intending to spread the news to discredit Step Up SA News and this intensified when Step Up News asked questions around the EnviroMobi Contract and this story will be pursued, as it is clear that there was alleged corruption because its alleged an employee was forced to sign off documents and they opted to resign.
Attempts to get solicit answers from the office of the Premier on several stories were to no avail as the publisher’s email was not replied to let alone acknowledged.
As a matter of principle, on 25 May 2021, an email was sent to Premier’s Spokesperson, Mr. Setjhaba Maphalla offering office of the premier a right of reply and needleless to say there was no response.
Below are issues Step Up SA News hoped the Premier would answer:
• Mangaung Taxi Rank
• Maluti a Phofung (MAP) water and electricity crisis
• Andries Tatane
• PPE scandals update
• A court case involving the wife of Fikile Mbalula and Hlaudi Motsoeneng that the Premier was pursuing while MEC of Human Settlement and Volgfontein Housing Development Project.
The publisher also sent questions to Roads, Traffic and Transport, Sport, Arts, Culture and Recreation, Human Settlement, Public Works, and Health.
Step Up SA News DOES NOT take censoring and silencing kindly as everyone was afforded a right of reply and they chose not to exercise it.
If indeed the State Security Agents are deployed to focus on a media house when the country struggles to deal with crime, cash in transit heists, Eskom sabotage claims, railway vandalism, human trafficking, and smuggling of vehicles to neighboring countries among others, then as a country we are a one big joke.
For the Free State Provincial government to deploy State Security on the website it means we are terrorists and involved in acts of espionage. The government must account and not shift the goalposts.
This is a spat in the face of President Ramaphosa and Deputy Minister of State Security Agency Zizi Kodwa, this must not be taken lightly considering in 2018, a Saudi Journalist Jamaal Kashoggi was assassinated at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by agents of the Saudi government.
The publisher is confident that it has done anything humanely possible to afford them a right of reply and by the way right of reply is not conditional.
The PPE Scandal story is underway with R39 million at stake and judgment is due any moment so, the question is must media houses keep quiet and watch because of people using public office for their own selfish needs?
Sad to see that people have become so greedy that their conscience leads them to do the opposite of what they always claim. Hence they couldn’t even pray “The Lord’s Prayer”, they don’t know God. No humane person who believes in God does what these people are doing.
We are engaging the office of Deputy Minister of State Security, Zizi Kodwa to get to the bottom of this.
At Step Up SA News, we inherently believe in the Freedom of the media as is the fundamental right of the various media—including print, radio, television, and online media. The media should operate freely in society without government control, restriction or censorship.
Unless the DPRT is put under under administration nothing will come right. It is going to be difficult to tell everything in details here. Right now the Hauweng Bus Rapid Transport is to be put into oparation without proper channels into place, taxi operators in that route are badly devided where the chairperson cannot answer questions to the members
We will call you on Tuesday