News Agency of South Africa: SAPA

SAPA stands for South African Press Association and it is the new agency of South Africa. SAPA news agency was established on 1st July, 1938. It’s headquarter is in Johannesburg with contact offices around the country. Some of the major SAPA contact offices are in Pretoria, Durban, Bloemfontein and Cape Town. Till 1938, the flow of news in South Africa was being dealt with by the Reuters. However, with the establishment of SAPA, Reuters became the secondary source of news itself drawing news from SAPA. SAPA and Reuters had a partnership, which allowed all the British and African newspapers to subscribe them. After sometime they became competitors in 1995, and this was when they ended their partnership. At that time, Reuters started improving its own business in South Africa.

Later on, the national parties in South Africa started criticizing SAPA because they thought that they are publishing too little stuff about the governmental views and the culture of Africa. Currently SAPA is the main source of distributing local and foreign news in South Africa. Other than newspapers, they work with other media types as well like radio, television and websites for broadcasting news and information. They normally provide their services in South Africa but there are some foreign users of SAPA as well who are interested in things happening in South Africa.