The Rand Daily Mail

The Rand Daily Mail was a South African newspaper published from 1902 until it was controversially closed in 1985 after adopting an outspoken anti-apartheid stance in the midst of a massive clampdown on activists by the security forces. The title was based in Johannesburg as a daily newspaper and best known for breaking the news about the apartheid state's Muldergate Scandal in 1979. It also exposed the truth about the death in custody of anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, in 1977. The Rand Daily Mail was resurrected as a website by Times Media Group, who hold rights to the original title, in October 2014. History The Rand Daily Mail was founded in 1902 by businessman Harry Cohen and managed by editor Edgar Wallace. It was bought by mining magnate Abe Bailey in 1905 after the death of Harry Cohen, forming a company called the Rand Daily Mails Ltd. Cohen leased the paper out to three people, George H. Kingswell, who became the general manager, Ralph Ward Jackson its editor and A. V. Lindbergh its distributor as CNA chairman. The three men would go on to form The Sunday Times which worked in conjunction with the paper. By 1910, the company help form the Reuters branch called the Reuters South African Press Agency. By May 1915, Rand Daily Mails Ltd (RDM) absorbed the Transvaal Leader when the Cape Times Ltd sold it for shares in the RDM and became the only morning newspaper in Johannesburg but that shareholding was soon bought out by Abe Bailey. In 1920, an agreement was reached by the Argus Group, Rand Daily Mails Ltd and Sunday Times not to publish papers that competed with the three companies and this agreement lasted until 1968. In 1929, the RDM ND Argus Group bought out the Pretoria News though the Argus Group held the majority shareholding.