In December 1823 the printer George Greig obtained permission from the Governor, Lord Charles Somerset, to publish a newspaper in Cape Town, and the first issue was dated 7 January 1824. Quite soon reports of a legal case, reflecting unfavourably on the administration, caused the authorities to demand the right of censorship. Rather than submit, Greig informed readers in the issue of 5 May 1824 that he would discontinue publication. He promised further details. To prevent this, the press was sealed, but the type remained untouched. Undaunted, Greig distributed free, on 10th May 1824, a hand-pressed broadsheet, ‘Facts connected with the stopping of the South African Commercial Advertiser’ (reprinted in 1963). The administration was not pleased. Greig returned to England, where he obtained permission to publish free from governmental censorship. He resumed publication on 31st August 1825, fifteen months after the previous issue. Publication was continuous until 10 March 1827. This time the paper was suppressed for reprinting an article from the London Times. Changes in the ministry in Britain, and of governors at the Cape, were followed by the reappearance of the paper on 3rd October 1828. In the following year ordinance 60 (April 1829) guaranteed the Press its freedom.

 

Names intimately associated with the early issues (in Dutch and English) are Dr. Abraham Faure, a prominent Dutch Reformed minister, and the poet Thomas Pringle, joint editor, with his friend John Fairbairn, of No’s. 13-18. Fairbairn retained the editorship until his death in 1864. First John Noble and then R. W. Murray succeeded him. Ownership passed from Greig to Fairbairn, who took William Buchanan of the Cape Town Mail as partner in July 1853, and the two papers were amalgamated. The South African Advertiser and Mail, as the combined papers were named from 6th August 1860, did not prosper. In September 1869 another amalgamation was entered into with The Cape Standard, and they continued under the name Cape Standard and Mail until the end of 1879, when publication ceased altogether. The paper under its various names appeared at irregular intervals, weekly from January 1824 and twice weekly from July 1826; then regularly three times a week from July 1853 to July 1858, when it reverted to twice weekly publication. In January 1862 it appeared 4 times a week, but this was reduced to 3 times a week from January 1867. The Advertiser and Mail ceased publication on 29th September 1869, and the Standard and Mail on 30th December 1879. Under Greig the South African Commercial Advertiser demonstrated the need for a free press, and under Fairbairn, whose able pen never departed from his principles, played an important part in Cape politics for forty years, in particular by its support of responsible government and of Dr. John Philip as against the frontiersmen. So vigorous was its stand in the Anti-Convict Movement that the Government side was forced into the expedient of publishing The Cape Monitor from 18th October 1850 to 1861

The Cape Monthly Magazine, which first appeared in 1857, was not only superior to The Cape of Good Hope Literary Gazette that preceded it, but had the longest life of any periodical other than a newspaper. When The Cape Argus eventually replaced the Commercial Advertiser, the Colony had found outlets for such talents of individual expression as it possessed; and this tradition was carried over to the 20th century, with such papers as The Cape Times (edited by Sir Maitland Park), The Cape (edited by A. D. Donovan) and the university journal, The Critic (edited by Prof H. A. Reyburn).

Acknowledgements and Source: Standard Encylopedia of South Africa.

Tags: Cape Standard, Charles Somerset, Greig, John Fairbairn, John Noble, The Advertiser, Thomas Pringle