The Department of Community Safety, Roads and Transport of the Free State Province rejects with the contempt the latest slanderous fiction peddled by City Press under the guise of journalism. What has been presented to the public is not reportage but a cheap piece of political theatre, authored by those who are masquerading as journalists, whose pens drip not with ink but with venomous malice. It is a cowardly attempt to assassinate reputations, distort reality, and undermine the very work being done to bring roads and dignity to our communities.

The so-called “abandoned dust bowl” they describe is in truth a living worksite where progress is evident and measurable, with four kilometres already overlaid with asphalt, 1.2 kilometres sealed, ten kilometres strengthened with a G5 subbase, and 28 000 cubic metres of seal stone 
delivered to camp, ready for the next phase.

Contrary to the article that R214 Million has been paid to the contractor, only R23,743,617.24 million has been lawfully expended, a mere fraction of the R214 million contract, whose 22-month programme is on track. Yet these self-styled watchdogs, blinded by choice, bark about R269 million vanishing into thin air. These imaginary tales are hilarious to say the least, these claims are not merely false; they are the intellectual equivalent of mud-slinging in a cathedral.

We remind the public that road rehabilitation is a phased and deliberate engineering process. The department accepts that:

tar was indeed removed, but not as sabotage, but as preparation for a stronger, safer surface. Dust, the temporary companion of progress, has been deliberately miscast by City Press as decay. But what do they care for technical truth when scandal sells better than science? They would rather peddle panic than facts, preferring the theatrics of doom to the discipline of evidence. 

The grotesque insinuations that the Honourable Premier and her family traded public contracts for luxury cars and campaign funds are not journalism; they are libelous gossip, concocted by a bitter failure of a contractor whose own track record is littered with collapse and incompetence. This is a man once cloaked in the livery of “Madwala” and now in the tatters of “New Beginnings”, a flashy tenderpreneur who, when stripped of the State’s patience after dismal failure, chose revenge through poison-pen letters instead of reflection through honesty. That City Press lends him its pages is proof not of his credibility but of their desperation. 

We know why this is done. When political cowards cannot match the government’s service delivery, they vouch for smear campaigns. When their failures echo in the silence of empty promises, they conjure scandals. But the truth is stubborn: Tau Pele has not abandoned the site; the Department has not misused a cent; and the Premier has not sold her soul for trinkets. What has been sold, however, is journalistic integrity that is lacking facts by City Press. 

It is not surprising that City Press, a once respected newspaper has lowered its once high standards. South Africans, fed up with gossip and half-baked stories; have correctly turned their backs on this publication. Dwindling sales, partly informed by poor journalism, have relegated the once respected publication to a digital only paper.

 
Their latest stunt will do very little to salvage the little that is left of their fading dignity. While the department supports the freedom of press, the media equally has a responsibility to report fairly and factually, something City Press has spectacularly failed to do.  Let it be clear that the people of the Free State are not fooled. They see the asphalt being laid, they see their sons and daughters rotating through transparent community job opportunities, and they see a government committed to completing this project with diligence and honour. They also see, with equal clarity, the charlatans who hope to profit from lies and the newspapers that rent out their mastheads as billboards for falsehoods. We will continue to build, kilometer by kilometer, while the authors of this drivel continue to scribble from the sidelines, their words as empty as the promises of those who pay them. And when the R709 gleams complete, it is not their ink but our tar that the people will drive upon.

ISSUED BY: DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNITY SAFETY, ROADS AND TRANSPORT