The Witness (previously The Natal Witness) is a daily newspaper published in Pietermaritzburg. It mainly serves readers in Pietermaritzburg, Durban and the inland areas of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
It is the oldest continuously published newspaper in South Africa, having first been published on 27 February 1846. Until 2000, when it became 50 percent owned by the Naspers subsidiary Media24 group, it was the last independently owned mainstream daily newspaper in South Africa. Media24 signed an agreement to buy the remaining 50% shares in the Natal Witness Printing and Publishing company in July 2010.
History
The Buchanan years, 1846–1872
The founding editor and first proprietor of the newspaper was David Dale Buchanan, who was born in New Lanark, Scotland on 17 December 1817. In 1829 at age 12 he arrived in Cape Town in the company of his elder brother, William. In Cape Town, he came into contact with men like Thomas Pringle and John Fairbairn who played a prominent role in establishing the freedom of the press during the autocratic governorship of Lord Charles Somerset. Another influence was the missionary Dr John Philip, whose liberal ideas concerning the indigenous people of the Cape Colony had a profound influence on the youthful Buchanan. While still in the Cape he went into partnership with his brother to set up the Cape Town Mail. In January 1846, he disembarked with his family from the Julia in Durban and from there proceeded inland to Pietermaritzburg, which had only three years previously been the capital of a Boer republic.
He seems to have functioned throughout his many years in the colony of Natal as both a lawyer, advocate and the most enduring of the colony's newspapermen. It was this connection with the law which led to the choice of “witness” in the name of the paper. This was further underlined by the paper's masthead which read: “The Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth”.
At first Buchanan was both editor and proprietor of the paper, but in 1852 the printing was taken over by a company named May and Davis. May seems to have dropped out of the picture and by 1860 the paper was owned by the firm of P. Davis and Son. This marked the beginning of a long period of close association between the paper and the Davis family, of whom the most enduring was Peter Davis Jnr, who took over from his father as chairman in 1873 and continued in this position until his retirement in 1916.
As Buchanan saw himself as a fearless crusader for the truth, the paper's strong views often put it and its editor in opposition to the governing authorities of the nascent colony of Natal and to sections of colonial opinion. In fact, a heated attack on the legal establishment in Natal under John Cloete led to Buchanan's brief, but much-publicised, imprisonment for contempt of court. Buchanan claims to have been imprisoned on two other occasions, but the records are silent on this contention.
Buchanan's combative nature came very much to the fore during the period from 1850 to 1856 when Benjamin Pine was Lieutenant-Governor of Natal. Buchanan despised Pine personally, regarding him as both corrupt and immoral, and kept up a vitriolic attack on the governor, his policies and his supporters.
During Buchanan's editorship the paper was distinguished by its relatively liberal, if paternalistic, attitude towards the black and Indian populations of the colony. He remained a committed supporter of the policies of Theophilus Shepstone, the colony's secretary of native affairs. As Shepstone's locations policy is often seen as a forerunner of apartheid, this has led some commentators to regard Buchanan as something of a reactionary. However, this fails to take into account that for liberals like the editor the locations policy was seen as the only way to ensure that the land rights of tribal people, as well as their customary lifestyle, were protected. Certainly, until the Langalibalele Rebellion of 1873, a committed liberal like Bishop John William Colenso had no problem in supporting Shepstone and his policy. It is therefore not surprising to find that the Witness also supported Colenso during the upheavals caused by the bishop's advanced religious views.
Buchanan fell on hard times during the extremely depressed years of the late 1860s. Around the time he spent more than a year petitioning in France and England on behalf of Cetshwayo and the Basotho people for more equitable terms on the treaty entered by the Basotho. He ended up not being paid for his efforts when Cetshwayo died during the trip and he was punished with non payment by Government officials who he had lambasted for corruption, who blocked payment and got their retribution. This along with failed investments in the economic downturn left him financially weak and he left Pietermaritzburg for the diamond diggings (later Kimberley) in 1872. Here he became very ill as a result of the unsanitary conditions and died most likely of Tuberculosis in September 1874 at his brother's home in Cape Town.
Besides his role as the founder of The Natal Witness, he had played a very active role in the political, civic, educational and religious affairs of Natal and is particularly remembered for having introduced the first postal service between Pietermaritzburg and Durban.
The imperial factor, 1873–1887
Buchanan's successor as editor was Ralph Ridley, who edited the paper until his death in June 1875. Unlike Buchanan, Ridley's views on matters relating to the black people of the colony were far less enlightened, and consequently during the Langalibalele Rebellion the paper approved of the strong line taken against the Hlubi, their unfortunate chief Langalibalele and the neighbouring clans.
As an extremely active member of the Natal legislature and a passionate proponent of responsible government, Ridley became the main opponent of the political reforms introduced by Sir Garnet Woleseley to downgrade the Natal legislature in order to pave the way for the implementation of Lord Carnarvon's plan for a confederation of the South African states. Despite suffering from a terminal heart condition, he fought the scheme with all his considerable talents, dying shortly before Wolseley had achieved his ends.
Ridley was followed by a Dr Smith, about whom not much is known.
Smith's successor was Francis Reginald Statham, who had been specially recruited in 1877, by Peter Davis from England. Statham was to serve two terms at the helm of the Witness, his second being marked by major controversy.
The main characteristics of the new editor were his fierce independence and his tendency to side with the underdog. Already in his first term, his support for the independence of the Boers at the time of the annexation of the Transvaal by the British in 1877, and for the Zulus during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, demonstrated these characteristics.
Statham left the Witness in late 1879 for Cape Town, to edit the new radically liberal newspaper, the Cape Post. He was succeeded by Alfred Aylward, a colourful Irishman who openly boasted that as a staunch Fenian he had been implicated in the killing of a Manchester policeman – a claim which, like many others made by the larger-than-life Aylward, has not withstood historical scrutiny.
Arriving in Kimberley in the early days of the diamond rush, Aylward initially posed as a medical doctor despite having no training in that field. Thereafter he edited one of the papers on the diamond fields in between serving a jail sentence for attempted murder. He was a leading figure in the so-called Black Flag Rebellion – an abortive attempt to challenge British authority in Kimberley. This was followed by a military career of sorts fighting against the BaPedi, under their leader Sekukuni, on behalf of the unpopular president of the South African Republic (ZAR), Thomas Francois Burgers. Despite his supposed Irish hostility towards the English, he stayed on after the British annexation, before re-emerging in Pietermaritzburg as the editor of The Witness.
It was during Aylward's term as editor that The Witness became a daily paper, and the railway line reached Pietermaritzburg, both in 1880.
The outbreak of the First Anglo-Boer War in December 1880 saw Aylward uncompromisingly on the side of the Boers, and his vocal support of the "enemy" eventually led to his hasty withdrawal from Pietermaritzburg, shortly before the Battle of Majuba. To the disgust of his detractors, he arrived on the battlefield after the humiliating British defeat as an advisor to the Boer Commander Piet Joubert.
After a short break, Statham took up the reins of the paper once again (the Cape Post having foundered). His return coincided with a political brouhaha over the breakdown of the Wolseley settlement in Zululand – which had seen that territory divided up among 13 chieftains – and the restoration of Cetshwayo as a result of the active lobbying of Bishop Colenso and his family.
Colenso soon decided – probably correctly – that the colonial officials were doing all in their power to undermine Cetshwayo and his Usuthu supporters. The bishop soon found a passionate supporter in Statham, who used The Witness and his position as the special correspondent for the London Daily News to attack what he referred to as "the official clique". Unfortunately, in the midst of this struggle on behalf of the embattled chief, the fact that Statham had served a jail term in England for embezzlement came to light and was used by his opponents to discredit him. On top of this a report in The Witness, based on Usuthu sources describing an alleged attack launched by John Shepstone of the Natal Native Affairs Department on the "defenceless" supporters of Cetshwayo at a meeting in Eshowe, led to Statham facing a libel suit brought against him by Shepstone. The matter had still not been fully resolved by the time Statham left The Witness in 1887.
Calmer waters, 1888–1903
From 1888 to 1903, the paper tended to be less radical, although, in terms of South African events, the period was anything but calm – especially as it ended with the South African War, unquestionably the most protracted, expensive and divisive war fought on South African soil.
Two editors dominated the period. The first was Herbert Penderel Longlands, who as the editor of a Kimberley paper had known the flamboyant Aylward. In contrast to the latter, Longlands seems to have been an intensely private man about whom not a great deal is known despite his long association with The Witness, which continued even after he had relinquished control of the paper to the much younger Ernest Thompson. Thompson, who had been born in Pietermaritzburg, was the first editor to have been born in South Africa.
The paper's views under these two editors could be described on the whole as being those held by the bulk of colonial society, particularly when it came to the growing crisis with the Boer Republics, which resulted in the South African War (1899–1902). Certainly there does not seem to have been any of the overt sympathy for the Boer cause that had been such a strong feature of the years of Aylward's editorship.
The Rose years, 1904–1925
Horace Rose was to leave an indelible mark on the paper during his long editorship. He had been born in 1874 in Port Alfred, where his father was a Methodist minister. From his pre-teen years he had developed a love for the sort of African adventure novels that made Sir Rider Haggard famous and over the course of his lifetime wrote a large number of novels in the Haggard genre, in addition to publishing two books about his travels in East Africa and Europe. He also wrote the screenplays for two of South Africa's earliest feature films – The Symbol of Sacrifice, about the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, and The Voice of the Waters.