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Africa Media Holdings

Africa Media Holdings is a Lesotho-based publishing company founded in 2008 by Zimbabwean journalist Basildon Peta, who serves as CEO. The company publishes the Lesotho Times, a weekly launched 2008, and Sunday Express, launched in 2009 — both operating under the masthead “News without fear or favor” and distributed in Lesotho and to Basotho audiences in South Africa. Peta, born circa 1972, is a veteran investigative journalist who fled Zimbabwe in 2002 after detention and persecution by the Robert Mugabe regime for reporting on corruption; he was the second journalist to receive the Media Institute of Southern Africa’s Press Freedom Award. African Media Holdings has faced sustained government pressure in Lesotho, including the 2016 shooting of editor Lloyd Mutungamiri and criminal defamation charges against Peta, which resulted in a landmark 2018 Constitutional Court ruling declaring criminal defamation unconstitutional. The company also operated the Free State Times and has faced financial difficulties, including a 2015 legal judgment requiring Peta to personally pay 125,000 US dollars under guarantee for debts owed to the Media Development Investment Fund, a New York-based NGO that provides financial assistance to independent media organizations. Peta participated in the February 2026 Belt and Road Media Cooperation Forum journalist delegation touring Chinese industrial sites.

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