Mail & Guardian

Mail & Guardian is a national South African weekly newspaper. It appears at the publishing house M & G Media, whose main owner with a share of 87.5 percent of the Zimbabwean media entrepreneur Trevor Ncube, who is also the Chairman of the Board, is, another 10 percent are held by the British newspaper The Guardian. Mail & Guardian is one of the few South African newspapers that do not belong to the four media groups CTP / Caxton, Independent Newspapers, Johnnic Communications and Naspers.

The editorial office of the newspaper is located in Johannesburg, editor in chief since 2004 Ferial Haffajee. She was the first woman who took such a position in a major South African newspaper. The edition was 2006 48.291 copies.

History

The newspaper was first established in early 1985 under the name of former journalists from the Weekly Mail newspaper Rand Daily Mail and Sunday Express, which had been previously set. The original shareholders were journalists, academics and businessmen who participated in each of several thousand edge. Coming from the liberal tradition of its predecessors, it was soon due to their criticism of the apartheid conflict with the then government, which led in 1988 to a temporary publication ban. From 20 June to 4 September 1990, the newspaper appeared daily as The Daily Mail, but returned for financial reasons back to weekly publication.

1991, during the transition period to the new democratic South Africa, Weekly Mail revealed along with The Guardian called " Inkathagate " scandal on in which to light was that had been derived from the budget for the armed forces of a part for financial support for the Inkatha Freedom Party in order to strengthen these supposedly against the African National Congress. This collaboration marked the beginning of the entry of The Guardian as a shareholder of financially ailing newspaper, which appeared as Weekly Mail & Guardian in 1992. In 1995, the Guardian took over the majority of the newspaper, which then received its present name. 2002 The Guardian sold the majority of his shares in Ncube.

Beginning of 1994 was the Mail & Guardian Online was the first African news site on the Internet.