South Africa’s State-Media Relationship

To call Koos Bekker an “oligarch” is perhaps a misnomer, as he is not particularly entangled in government business in the way others are. But he wields extraordinary influence, not through his wealth, but through his media empire, which dominates the newswires to a point that competition seems like an afterthought.

Almost anything happening in South Africa which has national relevance will be published, if not first, at least very closely second, by News24, a subsidiary of Media24, the main skin given to the old apartheid-era state propaganda vehicle Naspers. While Media24 is on the decline in profitability, this is not necessarily a sign of failure, but of market saturation (though there have been a few who have been turned off by their editorial byline in recent years).

Bekker made his money from founding M-Net and Multichoice, being chosen as CEO of Naspers, and piloting perhaps the most fortunate investment in SA history, in Chinese conglomerate Tencent. Naspers also owns over 95% of online retailer Takealot.

Thing is, along with Naspers, he inherited an organisation stuffed to the gills with government contacts. The company was founded by Willie Hofmeyr and fifteen other prominent Afrikaners to defend and promote Afrikaner nationalism in the wake of the defeated Maritz rebellion, and it soon became a National Party mouthpiece. By the end of the party’s rule, it owned 74 000 shares in Naspers, and used the company to fund the party in addition to its propaganda functions. In return, Naspers benefited from state patronage, including access to government information, and advertising and printing contracts, ensuring financial stability.

Little brown envelopes

There are several books on connections between state intelligence and the press during white rule, from the salacious memoir Inside BOSS, to the more serious historical tracts, like Hachten and Giffard’s Press and Apartheid and Ron Nixon’s Selling Apartheid. Muldergate was an infamous case of the National Party government’s secret funding of propaganda to manipulate media and public opinion, covertly financing proapartheid media outlets, including The Citizen, and attempts to buy international publications to counter antiapartheid sentiment. This led to the resignation of Prime Minister John Vorster in 1978. This, and the regime’s overt censorship are well known. But as Inside BOSS detailed, media control could be more sophisticated, and involved controlling the regime’s liberal critics, to create realistic critical discourse the state felt it could manage or defend against

The ANC also used established press contacts for propaganda and engaged in intimidation, as outlined in Anthea Jeffery’s book People’s War, which covers the ANC’s violent 1979-1993 campaign to eliminate competing black liberation groups. But they didn’t face much resistance to their demands for disinformation and propaganda, as most journalists local or foreign were already decided against the moral character of apartheid in a way that overrode their private objections to ANC tactics… Explore the full article in PRISM #2 (March 2026).