The Witness (South African newspaper)
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| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Owner(s) | Naspers |
| Publisher | Media24 |
| Editor | Zoubair Ayoob |
| Founded | 1846 |
| Headquarters | Pietermaritzburg |
| Website | www |
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.
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 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.
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