Printed on lined foolscap ledger paper, 325 x 205 mm, handwritten and cyclostyled, 8 pages, some staining and fraying but a very rare survival.
The Matabele Times and Mining Journal, founded in March 1894, was the first newspaper to appear after Bulawayo was captured by British South Africa Company troops during the First Matabele War. It was owned and edited by William Francis Wallenstein, a Jewish pioneer who was among the very earliest European settlers.
It was short-lived as the Matabele Times — it was soon absorbed into or superseded by the Bulawayo Chronicle, which was founded on 12 October 1894 by John William Howard of the South Africa-based Argus Printing and Publishing Company, starting as a weekly before graduating to a daily in 1897. The Matabele Times appears to have ceased sometime in late 1894 or 1895, after only a few months.
No records of circulation figures survive. Given that Bulawayo in mid-1894 was a brand-new colonial settlement of only a few hundred white settlers, the print run was almost certainly tiny — probably in the dozens rather than hundreds of copies per issue.
The content includes commercial advertising, for example:
Tattersalls Hotel — First Class Bar & Billiard Room; Auctioneers & Valuers.
The Bechuanaland Trading Association Ltd, Bulawayo — general stock, prospectors & miners material, timber & iron, agents for Nobel's Dynamite.
Dawson Bros — Wholesale & Retail Merchants, Bulawayo, Inyati, Mangwe & Kohame River; groceries, clothing, mining requisites, liquors, building material, 'Kafir truck'.
Sidney Redrup — Direct Importer, Wholesale & Retail Merchant, Bulawayo.
Julius Weil — Wholesale Merchant & Direct Importer; groceries, "Kafir truck," mining & building material, liquors & cigars.
Wirsing & Vialls — General Dealers, Bulawayo; ladies goods, general merchandise, blacksmiths iron, "Kafir corn & meal"; agents for the Northern Express mail coaches to Vryburg.
Nobels (Trust) Explosives Company Limited. Nobels N°ii Dynamite Five Guineas Per Case Nett Ex Buluwayo Magazine.
Articles of civic interest, for example:
GETTING INTO HARNESS
Our City Fathers are beginning to make themselves heard & the result of their labours must in due course become apparent. At last weeks meeting of the Sanitary Board a committee was formed to define the pathways. A resolution was passed to approach the Government with a view of getting favour for macadamizing the streets & sanitation work generally. A dog tax was also imposed, & considering the horde of the canine tribe in Bulawayo, it should prove a source of no inconsiderable income……
A classified section of small advertisements.
This newspaper represents frontier publishing at its most precarious.
- Size: 325 x 205 mm
