Small news is a labour of love
One of South Africa’s longest-surviving weekly country newspapers still operates in the Karoo. At its helm is a veteran who traverses vast distances every week to get it into the hands of readers
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The authors of this article are both former newspaper reporters. In all our years on the papers, the only time we ever ventured downstairs to the printers was to attend the company Christmas party, where grubby blue collar would meet wine-stained white collar and share a dram or two.
Although we loved the sights, sounds and smells of our print shops, we had no idea of how they worked. So when we pitch up in the Northern Cape town of Victoria West in 2016, we are intrigued to hear of an ancient print shop on the main street, behind the Kempen & Kempen law offices. We have to find out more.
A friendly auditor called George Kersop opens up for us and there it all lies: the Original Heidelberg printing presses, the paper guillotines, piles of printer’s trays and rows of lead type ready to be arranged and stacked into this week’s news of note. This was once the home of the venerable Victoria West Messenger, a very old country newspaper.
The Victoria West Messenger was born on 11 July 1875. The little Northern Cape farming town lay on the fabled Diamond Road between Cape Town and Kimberley, where a full pack of hookers, hucksters, chancers and chandlers were operating alongside men who were actually getting their hands dirty on the diggings. There was much to report on, as the diamond boomers flowed through a rather astonished Victoria West on their way north.
The paper was launched by Christiaan W Zinn in 1875 and left in the care of his son – also a Christiaan – in 1890 until 1902, when a human whirlwind called DM Olleman took over as manager. He ran the show until 1908.
Over the decades after its inception, the paper reported on mainstream news like the South African War (previously known as the Anglo-Boer War), the establishment of the Union in 1910, World War 1, the Spanish Flu of 1918, the Great Depression of the 1920s, World War 2, and all the epochs that followed.
But the true value of a community newspaper was that it also covered the minutiae, the “real news” that people living in Upper Karoo towns from Calvinia to Carnarvon and Williston to Victoria West craved.
In the 11 March 2016 edition of the renamed The Messenger, the headlines are about the Square Kilometre Array outside Carnarvon that is about to deliver vast volumes of data; a chap called Adriaan Estes is charity-walking with a huge wooden cross all the way from Cape Town to Bloemfontein; there’s a hoax story about a kid trapped in a squatter camp drain; sporting hero Kiewiet Jaers does well at a provincial athletics meet, and a whole bunch of veteran cars are rallying on 19 March to raise money for Huis Frieda Kempen, the retirement home hereabouts.
There is also something on the blue-green algae in regional dams, the madness in Parliament down in the Cape and a favourable review of a new book on explorer-soldier Robert Jacob Gordon.
We discover that the paper has been moved to Calvinia, where it shares quarters with Die Noordwester and Die Oewernuus.
“We must go there sometime,” we agree, and pin the idea for five years.
In May 2021, we finally arrive in Calvinia to finish the story. In a small shop on the main street, the 89-year-old Frans Hugo, his wife, Maxie, and their assistants are hard at work on this week’s edition.
Frans, it turns out, is one of the few newspapermen in the world who can navigate the innards of a Heidelberg press, the entire printing process, the reporting, gathering of announcements and, wait for it, the distribution of his three newspapers every week over vast distances of the Upper Karoo.
He can even cadge the odd advertisement from one of the municipalities in his bailiwick.
Aided by Maxie, he prepares the newspapers, has them printed, packed in his Fiat diesel bakkie, and on Thursday mornings at about 3am begins a long, looping journey that takes him from Calvinia to Carnarvon, Loxton, Vosburg, Victoria West, Prieska, Vanwyksvlei and Brandvlei. It’s a 1,200km road trip most travel journalists would feel proud to accomplish once a year.
On Thursdays, his first stop is the petrol station in Williston, where he leaves a pile of newspapers with one of the attendants to drop off at a shop later in the day. The local Williston doctor, headed for his weekly visit to Fraserburg, takes some of the editions with him. It’s hand-made Karoo distribution at its best, with many informal working parts.
“Then I head off to Carnarvon,” says Frans. “Their municipality takes papers for me up to Vanwyksvlei.”
Sometimes his weekly distribution forays end up with a flat tyre on a dirt road, and sometimes stuck in a Loxton water furrow.
“Then I’d have to call someone to help. I used to do all the mechanical work myself, but I’m a bit too old to crawl under vehicles these days.”
The years have not dimmed his passion for the Karoo, he says. “Every week, I see something new out there. The way the moon rises, the light catching on the side of a wind pump, the Anglo-Boer War blockhouses and the old, deserted train stations. They all look different every time.”
Born in Cape Town in 1932, Frans began his newspaper career as an apprentice compositor with the Nasionale Pers group. Then he saw an ad for an all-rounder’s post at the Victoria West Messenger, applied for the job and was swiftly hired.
An ambitious young man, Frans crossed the no-man’s land between the print shop and the newsroom and honed his writing and photographic skills.
“On a small newspaper, you learn to do everything,” he says.
One of Frans’s pet peeves is the trend of online news reading. There is no digital version of his newspapers. “We used to print 2,500 copies of The Messenger,” he says.
“Now we print only 1,300. It’s because many people like to read their news on cellphones.”
We want to know if Maxie and Frans have any succession plans for their newspapers, and they shake their heads. “They will probably die with us.”
Additional reporting by Julienne du Toit.