On 2 February 2011, Zuma announced that Manyi had been appointed, with immediate effect, as Director-General of the
Government Communication and Information System (GCIS), a position in which he would also serve as the official spokesperson for the
Cabinet. However, the
Mail & Guardian questioned Manyi's suitability, citing his BMF presidency—in which capacity he also chaired the BMF's investment arm, the Black Management Forum Investment Company, which invested in regulated industries—as well as concerns that he might overshadow government communications by "becoming the story". In response, the African National Congress (ANC) accused the media of "demonising" Manyi before he had assumed his new role.
"Over-concentration of Coloureds" remarks: February 2011 Less than a month after his appointment to the Government Communication and Information System (GCIS), Manyi faced a major controversy. In late February 2011, amid a wider political debate on proposed amendments to
employment equity legislation, the trade union
Solidarity released a video clip of comments he had made in March 2010 while serving as Director-General of Labour, during a televised interview on
KykNet's
Robinson Regstreeks. In the interview, Manyi addressed concerns that uniform provincial employment equity targets could disadvantage
Coloured South Africans, the majority of whom lived in the
Western Cape and
Northern Cape. He suggested that Coloured people could improve their employment opportunities by relocating to provinces where they were under-represented, as businesses there would be more likely to hire them to meet equity targets.''
Response The comments drew strong criticism. The
Freedom Front Plus and the
South African Municipal Workers' Union called for his dismissal, while the
Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) urged an investigation, saying the remarks "cast serious aspersions on his suitability for senior public office". The
Democratic Alliance (DA) accused the government of pursuing "
social engineering on a scale not seen since the darkest days of
apartheid" and described the comments as "crude
racism". Rossouw, writing in the
Mail & Guardian, suggested that his close ties to President Jacob Zuma shielded him from political consequences. Other ANC associates defended Manuel and expressed similar sentiments, with
Zwelinzima Vavi of
Cosatu agreeing that Manyi's remarks were "absolutely racist" and "a most unfortunate statement ever to be made in a democracy";
Kader Asmal released a statement which urged that, "Minister Manuel deserves the support and praise of all right-thinking South Africans. The choice facing us is very clear: do we stand behind the humane and generous values of Minister Manuel, or do we, by staying silent, lend our support to the mischievous and dangerous notions of Mr Manyi."
Allan Boesak wrote his own ferocious open letter to Manyi in the
Rapport, accusing Manyi of poisoning people's minds. However, the
ANC Youth League professed itself "disturbed" by Manuel's letter, saying, "We now do not know who Trevor Manuel represents, because his remarks falls squarely into the political agenda of
right-wing political forces opposed to the ANC". Manuel's letter also drew a response from
Paul Ngobeni, who, writing in the
Sunday Independent, called for Manuel to be fired. Ngobeni accused Manuel of being "a
gangster of the worst kind", of acting as though he was "the king of Coloured people", and of seeking to undermine
President Zuma and his cabinet through his "cowardly, unwarranted and racist attacks on Manyi". Ngobeni was subsequently suspended from his position as legal adviser to
Defence Minister Lindiwe Sisulu, who distanced herself from his letter and "all its contents", though he returned to work in July. When questioned about the saga two years later, Manyi said, "If such a honourable man such as
Jesus Christ, who brought good news and salvation, was harmed very viciously
on the cross, who am I?" He maintained that his remarks about Coloureds had been "grossly misrepresented" and said that the response of academics and analysts, who had criticised him in the media without taking the time to understand his view, had led him to "los[e] all respect for these so-called experts".''' However, the remainder of his term at BMF provided further minor controversies. The BMF once again became involved in Busa's governance: in mid-2011,
Beeld reported that Manyi had arrived uninvited at a meeting of Busa management to insist that BMF should have a say in the appointment of Busa's new CEO, though Busa said that the meeting had been "fully procedural". In addition, in March the next year,
GCIS staff complained to the
Mail & Guardian that Manyi had hired several BMF associates to senior positions in the agency.
''Vuk'unzenzele'': March 2011 In late March 2011, Manyi told
City Press that the government would launch its own newspaper, a revamped version of the existing government magazine, ''
Vuk'uzenzele, which was currently published every two months. Manyi said that the GCIS would publish the newspaper monthly from April and planned to ramp up to fortnightly publication within a year. With plans for print-run of between 1.7 million and two million copies, Vuk'unzenzele'' would have the largest circulation of any newspaper in the country, would be free to all residents, and would be published in all
11 official languages. The
South African National Editors' Forum (SANEF) was highly aggrieved by Manyi's accusation of censorship, with deputy chairperson
Raymond Louw challenging Manyi to provide specific examples of censored information.
Advertising restructuring plan: June 2011 In June 2011, weeks after announcing the ''Vuk'unzenzele'' initiative and still in his first six months in office, Manyi announced that cabinet had resolved to centralise all government
media buying under GCIS. The implication was that GCIS would control the entirety of government's
R1 billion advertising budget, hitherto dispersed across the different departments. Manyi said that centralisation would allow GCIS to "monitor and enforce adherence to the government brand" and to realise
economies of scale, directing the advertising budget to media outlets where the government would get the most "bang for its buck". The same week, he announced that GCIS, "forced" to find alternative ways of communicating government's message, was planning to procure substantial television airtime for national government ministers to inform the public about their programmes. Although they pointed out that government advertising was a relatively minor component of overall advertising revenues, news editors were furious with what SANEF described as an unconstitutional attempt to coerce the independent press into giving favourable coverage to the government, tantamount to "bribery" or
economic sanctions.
Crisis in SANEF relations: June 2011 A major feature of Manyi's tenure at GCIS was his increasingly poor relations with the press. In mid-2011, the
Sunday Times advised Manyi, "you should not accept a job as cabinet's spokesman if you hate dealing with the press", while a
Mail & Guardian editorial said that Manyi "is increasingly reminding me of a mash-up of
George Orwell's
Nineteen Eighty-Four and the movie
This Is Spinal Tap... Because there seems to be a desire, à la the
Spinal Tap amplifier that has a volume knob that goes up to 11, to ramp up the vitriol and
doublespeak when it comes to portraying 'the media' in South Africa". Tensions peaked in June 2011, in the aftermath of Manyi's announcement about the restructuring of advertising spending and also amid a controversy about the
Secrecy Bill. A meeting between SANEF and a GCIS delegation in mid-June ended in deadlock. In this context, appearing on
Radio 702 on 21 June, Manyi launched a personal attack on SANEF's chairperson,
Mondli Makhanya of
Avusa Media, whom he accused of fostering anti-government hostility among journalists through his "
cartel-like tendencies". In response, Makhanya said that Manyi was personally responsible for rapidly deteriorating relations between the media and the state, which he said had not been so bad "even in the days of [former minister]
Essop Pahad".
e-Tolls: February 2012 In February 2012, articulating the government's position on
Gauteng's highly unpopular
e-tolls, Manyi told the public, "This is not just a bad dream; it's a reality, it's going to happen. No one should have any illusion whatsoever that this thing is going to go away. It's a fact of life and it's going to happen". He was long remembered for this remark, which critics said exemplified his abrasive communications style. In April 2012, as
Cosatu promised the "mother of all protests" against the tolls, Manyi explained, "the whole process is quite simply a roll out of democracy".
Departure: August 2012 Manyi continued at the head of GCIS until mid-2012, and in January of that year, he was additionally appointed by Zuma to a three-year term on the five-person board of the Media Development and Diversity Agency. However, in June, the
Mail & Guardian reported that Manyi's three-year contract as director-general – counted as having begun in 2009 when he entered the Department of Labour – would not be renewed when it expired in August. The
Mail & Guardian had reported earlier that week that an ambitious proposal by Manyi for organisational restructuring had been blocked by the
National Treasury and Ministry in the Presidency.
Alleged role in state capture members carry a placard depicting
Atul Gupta at a
Zuma Must Fall protest in
Cape Town, April 2017. Even after Manyi left GCIS, his tenure in the department – less than two years in duration – remained controversial. In later years, GCIS was identified as a possible site of
state capture by the controversial
Gupta family, who were alleged to have acquired undue influence over the
Zuma administration. Manyi, who went on to become an employee and prominent defender of the Guptas, was implicated in several respects , but his tenure at GCIS, in particular, was investigated by the
Commission of Inquiry into Allegations of State Capture (colloquially the Zondo Commission). Established in 2018, the commission's terms of reference included an instruction to investigate irregularities in the award of government advertising contracts to the
New Age, the government-friendly Gupta-owned newspaper established in 2010.'''''' One central point of discussion was the circumstances under which Manyi had entered GCIS in 2011, unseating his respected predecessor,
Themba Maseko, who later blew the whistle on state capture. In July 2019, former President Zuma told the
Zondo Commission that Maseko had been removed because of a conflict between him and former Minister in the Presidency,
Collins Chabane, who had died in 2015. Maseko accused Zuma of lying, and he was supported by commission chairperson
Raymond Zondo, who observed that Chabane had given Maseko an extremely high performance score (114%) shortly before Maseko was removed. Instead, Maseko said that he had been fired on Zuma's instructions because he had refused to help channel the government's advertising spending to the Gupta-owned
New Age. In addition, GCIS deputy director-general Phumla Williams testified that the transition from Maseko's leadership to Manyi's leadership was the most rapid she had ever witnessed in government, with Manyi asking to be introduced to his new staff before Maseko had even moved out of his former office. The commission heard evidence that the
New Age had received a disproportionately large share of government advertising contracts, relative to its circulation; in the 2011/2012 financial year, it had received R8.7 million from government, while three major newspapers – the
City Press, the
Star, and the
Sunday Times – had received less than R200,000 apiece. Williams additionally testified that Manyi had changed GCIS's media procurement processes, requiring that he, rather than the department's bid adjudication committee, would sign off on tender processing, and that both the media-buying division and the
internal audit unit would report directly to him.
Testimony to the Zondo Commission During his testimony to the Zondo Commission in 2018 and 2019, Manyi contradicted these claims. He said that he had dismantled the bid committee and sidelined Williams in the oversight of internal audit precisely because Williams and the bid committee had been implicated in procurement irregularities. He also questioned the commission's approach, saying that he could not speculate about why he had been hired at GCIS and arguing, "I was a
pawn in the process. Why are you calling a pawn? Why don't you call the people who were playing the chess?" He challenged the commission to broaden the scope of its investigations, contending "that actually there has never been a time in which the state has not been captured"; he suggested that the capture of the state by
white monopoly capital predated the Gupta empire and in fact had led to the downfall of the Gupta empire. In response, Manyi vehemently criticized the commission's conclusions, describing them as "rubbish" and asserting that they were not substantiated by credible evidence. He argued that the commission's findings were influenced by his later role as the spokesperson for former President Jacob Zuma, whom he referred to as "the most-hated person" in South Africa. Manyi maintained that his real "crime" was his association with Zuma, rather than any misconduct during his time at GCIS, suggesting that the narrative surrounding state capture had been manipulated to unfairly target him. == Post-GCIS (2012–2023) ==