Afrikaans newspapers in South Africa have a long and proud tradition. They’ve been part of the country’s media landscape for decades. Generations, really.
But alas — in recent times — they’ve struggled.
When I was a young reporter, competing for stories at the courts against both English and Afrikaans newspapers, ?I remember the Afrikaans papers of the day in Johannesburg and Pretoria clearly.
Die Beeld.
Die Oggendblad.
Die Transvaler
Die Vaderland
Hoofstad
And others.
And of course, the big one back then was Rapport.
As you know, Media24 eventually stopped printing Die Beeld and Rapport and shifted them online. There was also Die Vrye Weekblad, a famous and influential publication, which stopped publication as a print title. I believe it exists online now, but it’s not quite the same thing. It’s not the original paper you unfolded at the breakfast table.
It was personally sad for me to see the end of Die Beeld. It had very good reporters. Even when I was reporting at English-language papers, Die Beeld’s photo scoops were consistently the best. It was renowned for its colour photography. Photojournalists from the English newspapers used to stare in genuine awe at copies of Die Beeld. They really did that part of the craft exceptionally well.
I also remember, back in the 1960s, my father — who was an editor at an English-language newspaper in Cape Town — being friendly with people from Die Landstem. In particular his friend was Sammy Lake, an outstanding journalist.
Now Die Landstem is probably a publication many people today have never heard of. But it’s worth mentioning, if only to remind us that Afrikaans newspapers have been opening and closing for many decades.
Die Landstem was a weekly newspaper published in Cape Town every Wednesday from 1950 to 1967. What made it unusual — and important — was that it was the last major Afrikaans newspaper that did not support the National Party. Although the paper described itself as politically neutral, it was often regarded as being sympathetic to the South African Party. That alone made it something of an outlier in the Afrikaans press of the time.
I mention Die Landstem simply to underline this point: the Afrikaans press has always evolved, fractured, regrouped, and reinvented itself. Closures are not new. But the scale of what we’ve seen recently is new.
To my knowledge — and I speak under correction — the only Afrikaans print newspaper that survives today is Die Burger. And Die Burger is essentially restricted to the Western Cape. It doesn’t have a national print footprint anymore.
So the Afrikaans print newspaper scene has been reduced to one title.
We all know why. Media24 consolidated, cut back, closed titles, and moved Afrikaans news almost entirely into its online stable. It’s a pity — but this is what big corporates do when news has to justify itself purely in terms of margins and spreadsheets.
What we shouldn’t forget is that newspapers — and some magazines — are institutions. They’re cultural memory. They’re not just content pipelines.
Just a couple of months ago, did you notice how quickly investors stepped in to save the Financial Mail from closure? That wasn’t sentimentality. It was an acknowledgment that certain publications matter to a country’s intellectual and business life. Thank goodness for investors like that — as long as they don’t start interfering in editorial policy, Washington Post–style, with owners laying down ideological rules from on high.
Now — some genuinely good news.
According to credible reports, we are likely to see the launch of a new Afrikaans print newspaper in 2026. Can you believe it? A new print title. In this climate.
It’s going to be called Die Papier.
The name itself is interesting. In Afrikaans, a newspaper is really a koerant, not a papier. “Papier” is a slightly anglicised usage — Anglo-Saxon Afrikaans, if you like — but never mind. The important thing is what it represents.
Die Papier is planned as a weekly, national, print newspaper. A proper one. From what I understand, it includes former editors and journalists from Die Beeld, and visually it’s expected to resemble the old Saturday edition of Die Beeld — which I used to enjoy immensely on Saturday mornings.
Now, it’s a startup. So we have to be realistic. The questions remain: will it have sufficient backing, will it attract advertisers, will readers support it, and will it get off the ground properly?
But if it does — and I hope it does — then this is a bright light on the horizon for Afrikaans print journalism.
South Africa could also do with a proper Afrikaans Sunday newspaper again. That may be a step too far for now. These things grow slowly. Shoots before trees.
For the moment, it’s enough to applaud and encourage the entrepreneurs behind Die Papier. They’re attempting something difficult, slightly unfashionable, and culturally important.
And in a country where so much is shrinking, closing, or being quietly digitised out of existence, that deserves recognition.
https://novanews.co.za/tag/die-papier/
http://perskor.blogspot.com/2013/05/landstem-krant-onthul-meer.html
