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The South African Press Association (SAPA) was the national news agency of South Africa until its closure in 2015.
The agency was established on 1 July 1938 [1] by major South African newspapers to facilitate the sharing of news. [2] Reuters had dominated the internal supply of news in South Africa until 1938. When SAPA was founded, Reuters retained the exclusive right to supply it with world news. Reuters ended this partnership in 1995, when it began expanding its own Southern African activities in competition with SAPA. [3] In February 1938, the constitution for the new agency was framed, and by April that year, it became a co-operative news agency under the control of every British and Afrikaans newspaper that wished to join. [4]
During the apartheid era, the agency was criticised by the ruling National Party for inadequate reporting of the government's viewpoint and Afrikaner culture. [5]
From 1964 to 1981, SAPA owned a subsidiary in the Inter-Africa News Agency (IANA) in neighbouring Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe), which was later taken over by the Zimbabwe Mass Media Trust. [6]
The non-governmental agency continued to function under the ownership of South African newspapers. [4] : 257 SAPA was the major news supplier of foreign and domestic news to South Africa, providing all forms of media – newspapers, television, radio and web-based – with news, videos and photographs. [2] Its newswire provided a constant feed of news to newsrooms in South Africa. The agency also maintained a picture and news video service and press release service called link2media. [2] Traditionally, SAPA relied on its regional newspaper members for regional South African news, in addition to reporting by its own staff. [3] : 155
Its head office was in Johannesburg, and it had bureaus in Cape Town, Durban, Bloemfontein and Pretoria. [2] Its primary area of distribution was in South Africa, although it did have clients abroad as well as exchange agreements with other major news agencies.
SAPA ceased operations on March 31, 2015 after its assets were liquidated. Its assets comprised one oversized boardroom table which was thrust into staffers' recreation room after the boardroom lease was surrendered during the agency's steady decline. Under the stewardship of Naspers employee Minette Ferreira, who acted as Sapa chairperson at the time, no copies of board minutes chronicling Sapa's demise were released to sacked employees or any media archive for future use by historians. Three companies – Gallo Images, KMM Review Publishers, and Sekunjalo Investments Holdings – expressed an interest in setting up an operation on similar lines as the agency, which is a special category of non-profit that may not be sold. [7]
Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and Mozambique to the east. The capital and largest city is Harare, and the second largest is Bulawayo. A country of roughly 15 million people, Zimbabwe's largest and dominant ethnic group are the Shona, who make up 82% of the population, followed by the Northern Ndebele and other smaller minorities. Zimbabwe has 16 official languages, with English, Shona, and Ndebele the most common. Beginning in the 9th century, during its late Iron Age, the Bantu people built the city-state of Great Zimbabwe; the city-state became one of the major African trade centres by the 11th century, controlling the gold, ivory and copper trades with the Swahili coast, which were connected to Arab and Indian states. By the mid 15th century, the city-state had been abandoned. From there, the Kingdom of Zimbabwe was established, followed by the Rozvi and Mutapa empires.
United Press International (UPI) is an American international news agency whose newswires, photo, news film, and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations for most of the 20th century. At its peak, it had more than 6,000 media subscribers. Since the first of several sales and staff cutbacks in 1982, and the 1999 sale of its broadcast client list to its main U.S. rival, the Associated Press, UPI has concentrated on smaller information-market niches.
A news agency is an organization that gathers news reports and sells them to subscribing news organizations, such as newspapers, magazines and radio and television broadcasters. A news agency may also be referred to as a wire service, newswire, or news service.
Australian Associated Press (AAP) is an Australian news agency. It was established by Keith Murdoch in 1935.
Wafa, also known as the Palestine News Agency and the Palestinian News & Info Agency, is the news agency of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), and was "the P.L.O.'s news agency" in the years before the formation of the PA.
The New Zealand Press Association (NZPA) was a news agency that existed from 1879 to 2011 and provided national and international news to the media of New Zealand. The largest news agency in the country, it was founded as the United Press Association in 1879, and became the New Zealand Press Association in 1942. Following Fairfax New Zealand's withdrawal from NZPA in April 2011, NZPA told staff that it would be wound up over the next four to six months, and ceased operation on 31 August 2011.
Tendai Laxton Biti is a Zimbabwean politician who served as Finance Minister of Zimbabwe from 2009 to 2013. He is the current Member of Parliament for Harare East Constituency and the second Vice President of Citizens Coalition for Change. He was the Secretary-General of the Movement for Democratic Change and the subsequent Movement for Democratic Change – Tsvangirai (MDC-T) political parties and a Member of Parliament for Harare East until he was expelled from the party and recalled from parliament in mid-2014,before winning the seat again in 2018.
The Herald is a state-owned daily newspaper published in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe.
The Internet in Zimbabwe has seen rapid expansion in recent years. The Internet country code top-level domain is .zw. In 2009, the Mugabe-Tsvangirai Government of National Unity established a Ministry of Information and Communications Technology to focus on ICT growth and development.
An Yue Jiang is a People's Republic of China container vessel operated by the state-run shipping firm COSCO. In 2008, it became notable because of controversy surrounding a cargo of arms and ammunition destined for Zimbabwe. The cargo reportedly includes some 3 million rounds of small arms ammunition, 1,500 rocket propelled grenades, and 2,500 mortar rounds. The vessel originally planned to dock at the South African port of Durban and unload its cargo for shipment to landlocked Zimbabwe. However, there were widespread protests by persons concerned that the arms would be used by Robert Mugabe's regime in suppressing political opposition in the wake of disputed elections. Dock workers stated that they would not unload the cargo, and others threatened to stop the shipment on South African roads. Finally, a South African judge ruled that the ship could not dock as planned.
Campaigning for the first round of the presidential election held in Zimbabwe on 29 March 2008 took place from February to March. There were three major candidates: President Robert Mugabe of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), Morgan Tsvangirai of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, and the independent candidate Simba Makoni.
The second round of voting in the Zimbabwean presidential election of 2008 was held between Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai after the first round failed to produce a 50% majority for either candidate. The election process was marred by violence against and intimidation of voters and party workers, which eventually led to the withdrawal of Tsvangirai from the poll. This left Mugabe as the winner of, effectively, a one-candidate election.
Reuters is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world.
News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different media: word of mouth, printing, postal systems, broadcasting, electronic communication, or through the testimony of observers and witnesses to events. News is sometimes called "hard news" to differentiate it from soft media.
Impala Platinum Holdings Limited or Implats is a South African holding company that owns several companies which operate mines that produce platinum and platinum group metals, as well as nickel, copper and cobalt. Its most significant mine is the Impala mine in the North West province of South Africa. The company also owns or has interest in the Two Rivers mine and the Marula mine in the South Africa Bushveld Igneous Complex and the Mimosa mine and Zimplats in Zimbabwe, as well as the Impala Refining Services which smelts and refines metals for other companies. In December 2019, Impala Canada was formed, owned by the holding company, out of the acquisition of North American Palladium and its mine in Ontario, Canada.
Mthuli Ncube, is the Finance Minister in the Zimbabwe cabinet appointed by president Emmerson Mnangagwa and past chief economist and Vice President of the African Development Bank. He holds a PhD in Mathematical Finance from Cambridge University. On 7 September 2018, President Emmerson Mnangagwa announced Zimbabwe's new cabinet where he named Professor Mthuli Ncube as the Finance Minister.
The 2014 Orkney earthquake occurred at 12:22:33 SAST on 5 August, with the epicentre near Orkney, a gold mining town in the Klerksdorp district in the North West province of South Africa. The shock was assigned a magnitude of 5.5 on the Richter scale by the Council for Geoscience (CGS) in South Africa, making it the biggest earthquake in South Africa since the 1969 Tulbagh earthquake, which had a magnitude of 6.3 on the Richter scale. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimated a focal depth of 5.0 km (3.1 mi). The CGS reported 84 aftershocks on 5 August and 31 aftershocks on 6 August, with a magnitude of 1.0 to 3.8 on the Richter scale. According to the CGS, the earthquake is the biggest mining-related earthquake in South African history.
General elections were held in Zimbabwe on 29 March 2008 to elect the President and Parliament. Because of Zimbabwe's dire economic situation, the elections were expected to provide incumbent President Robert Mugabe with his toughest electoral challenge to date. Mugabe's opponents were critical of the handling of the electoral process, and the government was accused of planning to rig the election. Human Rights Watch said that the election was likely to be "deeply flawed."
United News of India, abbreviated as UNI, is a multilingual news agency in India. It was founded On 19 December 1959 as an English news agency. Its commercial operations were started from 21 March 1961. With its Univarta, a Hindi news service, UNI became one of the multilingual news service in the world. In 1992, it started its Urdu news service and hence became the first news agency to provide Urdu news. Currently, it is the second largest news agency in India, supplying news in English, Hindi, Urdu and Kannada languages. Its news bureaus are present in all state capitals and major cities of India.
The Associated Negro Press (ANP) was an American news service founded in 1919 in Chicago, Illinois by Claude Albert Barnett. The ANP had correspondents, writers, reporters in all major centers of the black population in the United States of America. It supplied news stories, opinions, columns, feature essays, book and movie reviews, critical and comprehensive coverage of events, personalities, and institutions relevant to black Americans. As the ANP grew into a global network. It supplied the vast majority of black newspapers with twice weekly packets.
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