Sunday World journalists were offered money to bring in advertising
The acting editor at the time, Ngwako Malatji, is connected to Lottery deals under SIU investigation
Sunday World has been mired in ethical controversies. Photo: Ashraf Hendricks
Sunday World’s owners offered the newspaper’s reporters a commission for bringing in advertising. In May 2023, a letter was sent by Fundudzi Media to all staff offering a 15% “incentive” on new business they brought in.
“This incentive scheme is being introduced in an effort to encourage and reward employees who bring in new business for print and digital advertising,” the letter stated.
Letter sent to Sunday World staff in May 2023.
It has long been a principle of news media that there be a strict separation between editorial/news and advertising. For example, The New York Times’ ethics handbook states: “We do not do our journalistic work on behalf of advertisers or commercial partners. To assure our audience of this commitment, we should do our utmost to avoid conflicts of interest or even the appearance of a conflict.”
But with newsrooms under pressure, this wall between marketing and journalism has been breaking down at newsrooms worldwide. And in small South African community publications, there often aren’t enough staff for such a separation to be practical. But the Sunday World is not a small community newspaper.
Moreover, the blurring of advertising and editorial began long before the May 2023 letter. GroundUp has previously exposed how the National Lotteries Commission (NLC) paid a disproportionate amount of its advertising budget to the Sunday World. This was at a time (2019 to 2022) when the Sunday World published puff pieces about the NLC and attacked GroundUp’s journalist who was exposing corruption in the NLC.
Last year, President Cyril Ramaphosa amended his original Special Investigating Unit (SIU) proclamation to include procurement matters at the NLC. It allowed the SIU to investigate the advertising relationship between the NLC and Sunday World.
The Sunday World’s acting editor at the time the letter was sent was Ngwako Malatji. His family is linked to a probe that the SIU announced last week.
Before Malatji was Sunday World’s editor, his wife and father were directors of a non-profit company, Todi Media Development Foundation. In 2018 the company received R1.5-million in a dodgy Lottery grant. R550,000 was paid to Unscripted Communication, a company owned by Makhudu Sefara to organise a media workshop. Sefara, in 2019, and Malatji, in 2023, both would go on to become editors of Sunday World.
A further R900,000 from the grant was used to help pay for a house in the south of Johannesburg, which was registered in Malatji and his wife’s names.
Sefara left Sunday World in 2020 to join TimesLive and he eventually became editor of Sunday Times.
Todi Media has since admitted to “regrettable mistakes and missteps” and paid the R1.5-million it received over to the SIU. In light of the SIU investigation, Sefara stepped aside as editor of the Sunday Times and chair of the South African National Editors Forum last week.
Malatji did not answer questions sent to him. Sefara did not respond to questions and instead questioned the integrity of our reporter. Sunday World acquired a new owner last year. He did not respond when we approached him.
Former editor Wally Mbhele told GroundUp that soon after he began at the paper in February 2021, he found that some reporters were being paid commission for advertising.
“I believed it could compromise their independence and open up the possibility for corruption. As an experienced editor, I could not tolerate that,” he said.
“I then worked with HR and the advertising department to formulate and adopt a policy that journalists could not be paid commission on advertising. I worked closely with [deputy-editor] Kabelo Khumalo on the adoption of this policy.”
Mbhele resigned in December 2022. He offered to work three months’ notice while management sought and appointed a new editor, but was told “not to come back”.
When GroundUp shared the letter offering commission with Mbhele, he said, “I am shocked. That it happened after I left is beyond my comprehension. But I always suspected that there were dodgy things going on with some senior reporters.”
Malatji was appointed acting editor in early 2023, after Mbhele left. Malatji was the acting editor in May 2023, when the letter offering commissions for advertising was sent to staff. He resigned last year after the paper was sold to its new owners.
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© 2026 GroundUp. This article is published under the GroundUp Republication Licence Version 1.0. Email [email protected] to request permission to republish.