Mike Ntsasa is Co-CEO, Volt Africa.
At a time when the dominant conversation about newspapers is decline — closures, retrenchments, falling circulation — launching a new national newspaper in South Africa looks, on paper, like a bad bet. I'd argue the opposite. The National, which put its first print edition on retail shelves on 16 August, deserves to be welcomed not despite the industry's troubles but because of them. It's a rare thing right now: a media company willing to spend real money on the belief that journalism still has commercial and civic value.
The National is backed by the Sekunjalo Group, whose CEO Lucien Jacobs has described it as part of a broader push into national, regional and vernacular publishing, with strategic partners in the US and Europe funding the expansion. That's a serious commitment in an industry more used to shedding titles than adding them.
The paper has leaned into an image that suits the moment: the protea, South Africa's national flower, which doesn't grow where conditions are easy and blooms precisely because it has weathered fire and drought rather than in spite of it. It's a fitting emblem for a launch like this — not comfort, but resilience, and a bet that the country's harder, quieter stories of people rebuilding and pushing forward deserve as much attention as its crises do.
