South African Press Association

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The South African Press Association (Sapa) is the national news agency of South Africa. Established on July 1, 1938^[1], it is owned by the major newspaper groups in the country. Its head office is in Johannesburg, and it has bureaus in Cape Town, Durban, Bloemfontein and Pretoria. Its primary area of distribution is in South Africa, although it does have clients abroad as well as exchange agreements with other major news agencies.

Sapa proves all forms of media - newspapers, television, radio and web-based - with news and photographs. It has a similar structure to the Associated Press, which is owned by newspapers and television and radio stations across the United States, and is a domestic and international supplier of news. Sapa differs in this respect from Thomson Reuters, which is privately owned and is not a domestic news agency, and Agence France-Presse (AFP), which is partly owned by the French government.

Reuters had dominated the internal supply of news in South Africa until 1938. When Sapa was founded, Reuters retained the exlusive 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. Traditionally Sapa has relied on its regional newspaper members for regional South African news, in addition to reporting by its own staff.^[2]

From 1964 to 1981, Sapa owned a subsidiary in Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe), the Inter-Africa News Agency (Iana).^[3] The Zimbabwe Mass Media Trust took over Iana in 1981, changing its name to Zimbabwe Inter African News Agency (Ziana).