Witchdoctors, sex, feed tabloid-hungry South Africa

JOHANNESBURG – Racist sharks that only devour white swimmers, husband-snatching witchdoctors, and a magic tree with penis-enlarging leaves.

Such lurid tales ensure that South Africa’s young tabloid industry is riding a wave of sales. Driven by a classic red-top formula of sex and celebrity with a distinctive African bent, the introduction of tabloids has proved a hit with the country’s black majority 11 years after the fall of apartheid.”It has all the news about what’s happening in the townships, and it’s cheap,” said security guard Jacob Jaleni of top-selling tabloid Daily Sun.”Some people don’t like it but I think it tells the story like it is.”Publishers in Africa’s richest country used to target the richer white minority with upmarket titles in English and Afrikaans.Tabloid-style ‘smut’ – including photos of topless women – was banned under the conservative apartheid government.But media companies have realised there is money to be made in the mass market, prompting a flurry of cheaper and racier tabloid titles that are luring hundreds of thousands of readers from the country’s sprawling black townships.”Our research shows most Daily Sun readers had never bought a newspaper before the paper was launched,” said Steve Pacak, Chief Financial Officer at media firm Naspers, which publishes South Africa’s first full-blown tabloid.Daily Sun hit newsstands three years ago and is now the country’s top-selling daily, shifting more than 400 000 copies a day with a solid diet of sex, sensation and sangomas – the local word for a traditional healer.Two more daily titles – Afrikaans Son and English Daily Voice – and two Sunday papers have since followed, and more are in the pipeline.TOPLESS WOMEN The boom in tabloids aimed at the township market reflects a wider trend.Newspaper companies long wrote off black consumers as too poor to buy their products, but have recently woken up to the massive buying power the market holds.Media executives say higher incomes and improved literacy among the black majority, as well as the end of apartheid-era censorship prompted them to launch more populist newspapers.”The black majority is now free to vote and free to access the media,” said Karl Brophy, executive editor of the recently launched Daily Voice tabloid.”I think people finally realised what a completely untapped market it was.”Revenues are driven by circulation rather than advertising but executives say that is slowly changing as companies increasingly seek growth by selling to the black working class.Brophy says South Africa’s tabloids are based on Britain’s merciless red-tops, whose paparazzi photographers stake out stars in search of scandal – but with a local flavour.One recent Daily Voice edition featured a “racist” shark that only devours white victims.Daily Sun interviewed a woman whose husband had dumped her for the local traditional healer and another who claimed to have been raped by a gorilla.One report told of a magic tree whose leaves enlarged the penis of any man to eat them.”We are very like the British tabloids …but there is also an African element.Instead of the romping vicar there is the romping sangoma,” said Brophy.But while stories about sex are a staple, nudity is a touchy subject in conservative Africa.Daily Voice decided to risk a ‘page three girl’ – the British institution that puts topless women on page three – but some shops refuse to stock the paper, particularly in Muslim areas.Some other African countries already boast tabloids.Uganda’s raunchy Red Pepper features plenty of female flesh and Zimbabwe media firms publish two tabloids, albeit slightly more high-brow than some of their South African counterparts.Daily Sun, which retails at N$1,30 says its readers prefer stories about ordinary women with their clothes on, and if Jaleni’s reaction was anything to go by, its editors are right.”Naked women? In a paper?” he said with an incredulous laugh.”No that is not good.”POPULISM After watching the huge success of Daily Sun in South Africa, other media firms followed suit with their own tabloids.Ireland’s Independent News, which ditched a plan for a tabloid 11 years ago as too risky, launched Daily Voice in March.Naspers went daily with Son shortly afterwards and launched Sunday Sun in 2002.Independent, which also publishes Zulu-language tabloid Isolezwe, says it wants to expand Daily Voice and may launch a Johannesburg version.South Africa’s second biggest media company Johnnic Communications was forced to drag its more serious Sowetan newspaper aimed at the black market downmarket as new riskier titles lured away its readers.The tabloid press tends to shun tales of political intrigue from the corridors of powers in favour of crime and human interest stories about ordinary people from the country’s sprawling black townships.But they do speak out on community topics like the slow delivery of decent housing, water and electricity – thorny issues for the government – and their political clout could be on the rise, experts say.The success of the new tabloids and demise of The Sowetan, which championed the voice of the oppressed black majority under apartheid, may also illustrate a shift in the priorities of younger black people, say experts.Young South Africans who have enjoyed 11 years of democracy under a black-led government are more interested in getting a job, car and wardrobe of designer clothes than in the racial politics than defined their parents’ generation.”I think young people are different now, politics is no longer everything and they want to read about everyday issues that interest them,” Naspers’s Pacak told Reuters.A surge in newspaper reading was arguably inevitable after the end of apartheid since black people were no longer alienated from mainstream culture and politics, said Alan Dunn, editor of Durban-based Sunday Tribune.”Under apartheid, black people were not so interested in reading about a society they couldn’t be part of,” he told Reuters.”That has changed – this is their country now.”- Nampa-ReutersDriven by a classic red-top formula of sex and celebrity with a distinctive African bent, the introduction of tabloids has proved a hit with the country’s black majority 11 years after the fall of apartheid.”It has all the news about what’s happening in the townships, and it’s cheap,” said security guard Jacob Jaleni of top-selling tabloid Daily Sun.”Some people don’t like it but I think it tells the story like it is.”Publishers in Africa’s richest country used to target the richer white minority with upmarket titles in English and Afrikaans.Tabloid-style ‘smut’ – including photos of topless women – was banned under the conservative apartheid government.But media companies have realised there is money to be made in the mass market, prompting a flurry of cheaper and racier tabloid titles that are luring hundreds of thousands of readers from the country’s sprawling black townships.”Our research shows most Daily Sun readers had never bought a newspaper before the paper was launched,” said Steve Pacak, Chief Financial Officer at media firm Naspers, which publishes South Africa’s first full-blown tabloid.Daily Sun hit newsstands three years ago and is now the country’s top-selling daily, shifting more than 400 000 copies a day with a solid diet of sex, sensation and sangomas – the local word for a traditional healer.Two more daily titles – Afrikaans Son and English Daily Voice – and two Sunday papers have since followed, and more are in the pipeline.TOPLESS WOMEN The boom in tabloids aimed at the township market reflects a wider trend.Newspaper companies long wrote off black consumers as too poor to buy their products, but have recently woken up to the massive buying power the market holds.Media executives say higher incomes and improved literacy among the black majority, as well as the end of apartheid-era censorship prompted them to launch more populist newspapers.”The black majority is now free to vote and free to access the media,” said Karl Brophy, executive editor of the recently launched Daily Voice tabloid.”I think people finally realised what a completely untapped market it was.”Revenues are driven by circulation rather than advertising but executives say that is slowly changing as companies increasingly seek growth by selling to the black working class.Brophy says South Africa’s tabloids are based on Britain’s merciless red-tops, whose paparazzi photographers stake out stars in search of scandal – but with a local flavour.One recent Daily Voice edition featured a “racist” shark that only devours white victims.Daily Sun interviewed a woman whose husband had dumped her for the local traditional healer and another who claimed to have been raped by a gorilla.One report told of a magic tree whose leaves enlarged the penis of any man to eat them.”We are very like the British tabloids …but there is also an African element.Instead of the romping vicar there is the romping sangoma,” said Brophy.But while stories about sex are a staple, nudity is a touchy subject in conservative Africa.Daily Voice decided to risk a ‘page three girl’ – the British institution that puts topless women on page three – but some shops refuse to stock the paper, particularly in Muslim areas.Some other African countries already boast tabloids.Uganda’s raunchy Red Pepper features plenty of female flesh and Zimbabwe media firms publish two tabloids, albeit slightly more high-brow than some of their South African counterparts.Daily Sun, which retails at N$1,30 says its readers prefer stories about ordinary women with their clothes on, and if Jaleni’s reaction was anything to go by, its editors are right.”Naked women? In a paper?” he said with an incredulous laugh.”No that is not good.”POPULISM After watching the huge success of Daily Sun in South Africa, other media firms followed suit with their own tabloids.Ireland’s Independent News, which ditched a plan for a tabloid 11 years ago as too risky, launched Daily Voice in March.Naspers went daily with Son shortly afterwards and launched Sunday Sun in 2002.Independent, which also publishes Zulu-language tabloid Isolezwe, says it wants to expand Daily Voice and may launch a Johannesburg version.South Africa’s second biggest media company Johnnic Communications was forced to drag its more serious Sowetan newspaper aimed at the black market downmarket as new riskier titles lured away its readers.The tabloid press tends to shun tales of political intrigue from the corridors of powers in favour of crime and human interest stories about ordinary people from the country’s sprawling black townships.But they do speak out on community topics like the slow delivery of decent housing, water and electricity – thorny issues for the government – and their political clout could be on the rise, experts say.The success of the new tabloids and demise of The Sowetan, which championed the voice of the oppressed black majority under apartheid, may also illustrate a shift in the priorities of younger black people, say experts.Young South Africans who have enjoyed 11 years of democracy under a black-led government are more interested in getting a job, car and wardrobe of designer clothes than in the racial politics than defined their parents’ generation.”I think young people are different now, politics is no longer everything and they want to read about everyday issues that interest them,” Naspers’s Pacak told Reuters.A surge in newspaper reading was arguably inevitable after the end of apartheid since black people were no longer alienated from mainstream culture and politics, said Alan Dunn, editor of Durban-based Sunday Tribune.”Under apartheid, black people were not so interested in reading about a society they couldn’t be part of,” he told Reuters.”That has changed – this is their country now.”- Nampa-Reuters