In a recently published book, Reconsidering the History of South African Journalism: The Ghost of the Slave Press (2025 Routledge), author and journalism professor Gawie Botma explores the gap in the country’s understanding about the complicity of South African journalism in slavery. He spoke to The Conversation about what he found.
Slavery and journalism: what’s the connection?
In the US and Britain a few newspapers have issued apologies for their complicity in the slave trade. These include the Hartford Courant in Connecticut, considered to be the oldest continuously published publication in the US. In 2000 it apologised for its complicity in the slave trade nearly two centuries earlier. In 2023 The Guardian in the UK apologised for the fact that its founders had had links to the transatlantic slave trade.
