South Africa's earliest newspapers made money from slavery

New research has revealed that for four decades before slavery was abolished in 1838, printed publications enabled slavery in the Cape colony. By Gawie Botma

- By Gawie Botma

In a recently published book, Reconsidering the History of South African Journalism: The Ghost of the Slave Press (2025 Routledge), author and journalism professor Gawie Botma explores the gap in the country's understanding about the complicity of South African journalism in slavery. He spoke to The Conversation about what he found.

Slavery and journalism: what's the connection?

In the US and Britain, a few newspapers have issued apologies for their complicity in the slave trade. They include the Hartford Courant in Connecticut, considered to be the oldest continuously published publication in the US. It apologised in 2000 for its complicity in the slave trade nearly two centuries earlier. The Guardian in the UK apologised in 2023 for its founders having had links to the transatlantic slave trade.

The South African media have remained silent about their historical role in Cape slavery. Slavery in the country lasted for more than 170 years between 1652 and 1838

Precise numbers are difficult to calculate. But according to the historian Robert Shell, about 63,000 enslaved people were imported to the Cape from four main areas: the rest of Africa (26.4%), India (25.9%), Indonesia (22.7%) and Madagascar (25.1%). About 37,000 were emancipated in 1838.

The first newspaper in the Cape colony - including parts of what are now the Western and Eastern Cape provinces - appeared in Cape Town four decades before slavery was abolished in 1838. No other publishing activities existed in what is now South Africa. The Cape, then a colony of the British Empire, was the only formal European settlement and only a few printing presses operated at scattered mission stations in the interior of southern Africa.

What I found during my research was the sobering fact that several of the owners, editors, publishers and printers of about 16 early newspapers and magazines between 1800 and 1838 were slave owners themselves.