Bongani Ndlovu
Daimon Phiri, Correspondent
BEFORE the roar of kombis at Basch Street Bus Terminus (Egodini) and the clang of the National Railways of Zimbabwe yards, Sundays in Bulawayo were quiet.
Too quiet. The week’s news stopped on Saturday afternoon when The Bulawayo Chronicle went to press. For a city that lived on cattle sales, gold trains and indabas that stretched into the weekend, the silence was commercial suicide.
The solution came in the 1930s and it came modestly.
The Great Depression was bankrupting small weeklies across Southern Rhodesia. In Salisbury, the Argus Group snapped up a failing Sunday paper and turned it into The Sunday Mail, Harare. In Bulawayo, they did the same with Sunday News.
Two struggling weeklies were bought for pennies, merged, re-branded and on a crisp winter morning in the 1930s, The Sunday News was born – the Sunday edition of The Bulawayo Chronicle, the city’s paper of record since October 1894.
Argus did not list a “founder editor” because Sunday News began as a product, not a newsroom.
It was run by Chronicle’s editor of the day, who assigned a skeleton Sunday crew.
But the man who gave it teeth was Norman Ferris, Chronicle editor from 1931. Ferris, who would later edit The Rhodesia Herald for 24 years, understood Bulawayo’s rhythm: farmers came to town on Saturday, sold cattle, drank at the Grand Hotel and wanted something to read on Sunday before the train home.
Sunday News became that read, heavier on rural affairs, sport and “native affairs” than its weekday parent.
How were they doing it in 1935?
Saturday night, after the last edition rolled, the cleaners swept up lead shavings and the compositors went to the Palace Bar. At 6AM on Sunday, a skeleton crew returned — one sub-editor, two reporters, a linotype operator and the foreman printer.
There were no Sunday phone calls. No press releases. News was gathered the old way.
For example, the Saturday night diary: Police at Drill Hall logged weekend crimes in a book. A cub reporter copied it by hand at 10PM.
Next, the church and sports run: At 7AM, a reporter bicycled to St Mary’s Cathedral for the sermon, then to Hartsfield for rugby scores. He phoned them from the public box at the Central Police Station — the only line open on Sunday.
The railways telegraph followed, and ran 24 hours by the NRZ. Station masters in Plumtree, Gwanda and Wankie tapped out cattle prices and train delays on the Morse key.
Sunday News had a deal: they’d print the timetables free if NRZ gave them the wire first.
How were stories written?
In pencil, on copy paper ruled in blue, with “SUNDAY” stamped at the top. Paragraphs were short because linotype machines hated long sentences.
A “hot” story, say, a lion on Fife Street, was written in the pub on the back of a beer coaster, phoned in from the Grand Hotel, then re-written by the sub.
Headlines were set by hand in wood type for impact: LION IN FIFE STREET — 72-point, no joke. Inside, the body was hot metal. The linotype operator, sweating in a vest, would re-key the whole story on a machine that cast each line of type in lead.
One wrong key and the “slug” went back into the hellbox to be melted.
Photos? Rare. If Chief Lobengula’s grandson visited, the photographer lugged a plate camera, shot one glass plate and prayed it didn’t crack on the bicycle ride back. More often, Sunday News used “cuts” — engraved blocks ordered from South Africa that took three weeks to arrive. By then, the chief would have gone home. The smell was ink, lead and deadline.
By 1PM on Sunday, the forms were “locked up”, heavy steel frames of type. The old Wharfedale flatbed press groaned to life. Boys in shorts fed paper one sheet at a time. The edition was eight pages. If it rained, the newsboys at Egodini wrapped it in yesterday’s Chronicle to keep it dry.
Why did it matter?
Because Monday was too late. Cattle prices changed on Sunday. Borehole tenders closed on Monday. If your team lost at Hartsfield, you needed to debate it in the beer hall on Sunday night, not Monday morning.
Sunday News became Bulawayo’s common room in print.
From hot metal to digital
Only in the 1970s did Sunday News get its first Rhodesian-born editor and its first black reporters. The hot metal died in the 1980s, replaced by computers.
Today, the deadline is midnight on Saturday, not 1PM on Sunday. The “runners” are now WhatsApp tips from Renkini. The linotype is in the museum at the NRZ complex.
From bankrupt weeklies to 90 000 copies at its peak, Sunday News survived depression, Ian Smith’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) censorship and the internet because it did what William Fairbridge did in that tent in 1891: it showed up when the city woke up and told it what happened while it slept.
Sunday News milestones
- Roots: Born in the 1930s from two weeklies bought during the Great Depression.
- Parent paper: The Bulawayo Chronicle, launched in October 1894, Zimbabwe’s second oldest paper.
- Early editors: Run by Chronicle editors; Norman Ferris shaped it from 1931 to 1955.
- First black staff: Entry-level journalists hired in the 1970s.
- Publisher today: Zimpapers (1980) Limited
derick.khumalo