APRIL 1 2025; THE DAY THE TIMES WILL OFFICIALLY ANNNOUNCCE NEW OWNERS.
For over a century, the Times of Eswatini stood as a symbol of journalistic integrity in Africa’s last absolute monarchy. Founded by Alister Miller (alias Mabhala) in 1897. Douglas Loffler bought it from South Africa's Argus Group in 1974. Under Douglas Loffler, the newspaper began as a fearless challenger to power, exposing corruption and amplifying marginalized voices.
Its early decades were marked by defiance: Douglas faced relentless threats from colonial and post-colonial authorities, including deportation, for his paper’s hard-hitting reporting. Under his leadership, The Times became a thorn in the side of the monarchy, unafraid to critique royal excesses and government mismanagement. Yet, this independence came at a cost. Successive regimes, including the government of Prime Minister Sibusiso Dlamini in the 1990s and 2000s, weaponized state advertising—a financial lifeline for media—to punish the paper.
Editors were routinely summoned to Ludzidzini, the royal headquarters, to apologize for “overstepping,” while deportation threats hung over Douglas like a sword. Over time, these pressures began to mellow the paper’s edge. The decline accelerated under Paul Loffler, Douglas’s son. Though he inherited a legacy of courage, Paul’s tenure (beginning in the late 1990s) revealed a publisher increasingly willing to compromise having seen the constant threats of deportation of his father and his own uncertainity in despite being born and bred here.
Even though Paul's father was a hard nosed journalist who appreciated the need to grow, defend and protect the profession, his son was more of a businessman who saw the prrofession as means to make him money, lots of it. For Douglas to toe the line the state would often threaten to deport him to Namibia while for Paul there was always threats of withholding the lifeblood of the newspaper; adverts. Paul was often forced into humiliating pilgrimages to Ludzidzini to beg forgiveness for stories that angered the palace.
By the 2010s, the paper’s editorial direction grew unmistakably softer, avoiding scrutiny of King Mswati III’s lavish spending or human rights abuses by the government. The final blow to The Times’ independence came with the re-appointment of Martin Dlamini as Managing editor in the early 2010s. Dlamini, who doubled as a speechwriter for the monarchy, embodied the paper’s transformation from watchdog to partisan mouthpiece.
Under his leadership, critical reporting on the king vanished, replaced by sycophantic coverage of royal events and sanitized government narratives. Investigative pieces on corruption were shelved, while dissenters of the regime found their voices erased from the paper’s pages. This duality—a newsroom claiming independence while its editor penned royal propaganda—marked The Times’ full capitulation to state power.
A Legacy Tarnished: Financial Exploitation and Elite Collusion
Paul Loffler’s ethical failures extended beyond editorial cowardice. Journalists at The Times labored under exploitative conditions, with many earning poverty wages despite facing constant risks. Meanwhile, Paul amassed a multimillion-dollar fortune through property deals and other ventures, and offshore accounts exposed in the Panama Papers. His hypocrisy—profiting from secrecy while his paper claimed to champion transparency—laid bare the rot within the Loffler dynasty.
By 2023, The Times was a shadow of its former self. Circulation plummeted from 30,000 to 10,000, a testament to eroded public trust, high staff turn over, juniorisation of the newsroom, digital transformation (where globally hard copies were fading out) and a very hostile judiciary with a bone to chew with the newspaper. Lawsuits were awarded against the Times more as vengeance than justice. When Paul sold the paper to Michelo Shakantu, a businessman with deep ties to the monarchy, it was the final surrender.
Shakantu, already owning the Eswatini Financial Times, now controls two major media outlets, further suffocating pluralism in a nation where dissent is criminalized. His conglomerate, spanning construction and energy sectors reliant on royal patronage, ensures The Times will never risk biting the hand that feeds it.
A Glimmer of Hope Amid the Ruins
Yet, The Times' legacy is not entirely bleak. For decades, it incubated generations of journalists who shaped eSwatini’s media landscape. Many of its alumni, now working for other news platforms, continue to fight for press freedom—a testament to the paper’s original mission. eSwatini’s media landscape is a battleground. With Shakantu’s takeover, the monarchy tightens its stranglehold on narratives, ensuring coverage of pro-democracy protests, corruption, and economic inequality remains muted.
New online "independent outlets" are more to the extreme left of the Times, often reckless, unethical, and beholden to new factions of the democratic camp. The Lofflers’ journey—from principled defiance to complicit silence—mirrors the erosion of press freedom across autocratic regimes. But history shows that suppressed truths have a way of resurfacing. As eSwatini’s youth and civil society demand democracy, the need for independent journalism grows urgent. The battle for eSwatini’s media soul is not over. It has only just begun.