The first newspaper in Zambia

From the latest issue of the Zambezi Traveller, available in print and online.

By Clare Mateke

Shortly after the turn of the 20th century, the first official newspaper for the territory which is now Zambia was registered - The Livingstone Pioneer and Advertiser. In fact it was the first newspaper in Central Africa north of the Zambezi. However, the story actually goes further back, to the days of the Old Drift, the first European settlement in the area.

In 1898 a small European settlement began on the north bank of the Zambezi River about 10km upriver from the Victoria Falls. This was after Frederick ‘Mopane’ Clarke identified a useful crossing point to ferry goods and people going north across the river. Clarke was an agent for the Northern Copper Company and set himself up as ferryman and forwarding agent at this site which later came to be called the Old Drift, and was the origin of Livingstone town.

In 1902 William Trayner, an Irishman then living in Scotland, left his home and arrived in Livingstone about a year later. He got a job under Clarke in charge of the canoe ferries. Since he was always on the river meeting travellers, he was the first person to receive news from the south. There was no railway and no telephone and letters only came about once a month, so this was very important to those in the Drift camp. 

Trayner was the news-bringer and had to report to the crowd in the bar at night. As Trayner himself later put it, “To those living in the camp on the north bank in utter isolation, the southern bank was the outside world and as I was over there and at the Falls many times a day, I was regarded as a source of news when I rolled up at the bar of an evening. In the very early days news was a bit scarce and had to be ‘made up’ about crocs and the hippo we had seen, or the lion spoor close to the drift.”

Some residents were not very good at writing, so he would write for them so that they could send the news home. Sometimes several people wanted the same item, so he would make carbon copies. Sometimes he would pin a sheet of paper up in the bar and people would discuss it.

In 1905 the Old Drift community was moved away from the mosquito infested marshes along the river up the hill to the current location of Livingstone. After the move, Trayner’s paper began to take on a more definite form. He acquired a typewriter and later managed to get several copies made using a mimeograph machine. Covers and advertisements were printed and sent up from Bulawayo, while news gathering and distributing became routine. William Trayner seems to have been a man of all trades in the new town, producing his newspaper in between other jobs.

Trayner said he had never planned to start a newspaper. He just wrote while in the canoe as boys paddled him up and down the Zambezi, more for shorthand practice than anything else. (He was the only person in North-Western Rhodesia at the time who could take down shorthand). Then in the evening he would type up his sheets “just for typing practice.”

The paper did not have a definite name at first. It was variously called the Gazette or Advertiser. However, the readers in the bar made up their own names for it, such as the Gay Gazette, The Livingstone Liar or Trayner’s Rag’

The District Commissioner, Mr F W Sykes, decided that the news sheet must be officially registered as a newspaper. When he asked Trayner who was behind the paper, Trayner replied, “There’s nobody behind it.” Sykes then went on to say, “I think the gang’s running this; the gang that crowd into the bar.” Trayner’s response was, “Well, yes, that’s true in a sense. The gang talk a lot, and one has to get the pages filled up somehow. I couldn’t make it all up, but I make a good deal of it up.”

Sykes told Trayner that for the newspaper to be registered it would need a decent name.  He suggested The Livingstone Pioneer and that became its new and official name (or in full The Livingstone Pioneer and Advertiser). So, in Trayner’s words, what “started as a schoolboy’s prank was now a respectable newspaper.”

The first mimeographed issue appeared on 13 January 1906. It was a weekly paper, with sales in the order of fifty copies a week. Trader Percy Clark described it as “a very popular weekly with enormous circulation, sometimes as many as 50 copies a week net sales.”

Trayner had a gossip column in the paper headed ‘Falls Spray’ which often began, “Now, let us spray …”. And spray they did on notabilities and nonentities alike. Most of it was made up and just intended to give a laugh, such as the following note that appeared in the issue of 20 January 1906: ‘The tourist who attempted to carve his initials on the rock standing half-way across the Main Falls is still missing.’

The 27 January 1906 issue had the following item under the ‘Falls Spray’ column:

‘The attention of visitors is called to the new Gorge said to be forming between Cataract and Livingstone islands, and they are advised to view it immediately on arrival, competent authorities having estimated that by the year 3906 considerable changes will have taken place. Photographers will do well to keep records for purposes of comparison.’

Although he was rather short of writers, Trayner found ways of getting round this, as can be seen in this extract from the issue of 10 February 1906:

‘OUR LADIES’ COLUMN.  Having unaccountably failed to induce any lady to undertake the conduct of this column, we have decided to write the thing ourself. A Ladies Column we must have – all the London Weeklies make a leading feature of it – and we have accordingly borrowed a copy of Mrs Weldon’s Journal and a Garlick’s illustrated price-list of ladies’ underwear; by combining the information contained in them we feel confident that we can produce a striking and original article.’

One day Trayner had a long argument with residents about blackwater fever (a serious complication of malaria). They said it was wiping out so many people that there must be an epidemic. Trayner disagreed and wrote a raging article in his paper.  Immediately afterwards he went down with the very disease he had just written about.

He was admitted to hospital and at one point when he seemed about to die, the nurse said he suddenly sat up in bed and started shouting at her. He told her he had had enough of her and she should get out and let him die in peace. Not knowing what else to do she decided to do just that. But amazingly, he pulled through and later had to apologise to the nurse.

After several bouts of  blackwater fever, Trayner had run low on money. Meanwhile, a rival weekly paper, The Livingstone Mail, had been started by Leopold Moore in March 1906. It outdid the Pioneer, selling 175 copies a week. Trayner looked for people to partner with but failed to find anyone. So he gave up and decided to head off into the bush to hunt and trade in cattle.

The last issue of the Livingstone Pioneer was produced on 29 September 1906.

Acknowledgements:
The author would like to acknowledge the Livingstone Museum for access to original issues of The Livingstone Pioneer and Advertiser, and the following publications:
Anonymous. 1964‘The Livingstone Pioneer: The first newspaper,’ The Northern Rhodesia Journal. Vol. V, No. 4, pp. 389-386
Barnes, P, &Trayner, W. 1964. ‘The Livingstone Pioneer,’ The Northern Rhodesia Journal. Vol. V, No. 6, pp. 561-566
Graham, I. 1964 ‘Newspapers in Northern Rhodesia,’ The Northern Rhodesia Journal. Vol. V, No. 5, pp. 421-431

Read more from the latest issue:
Rich symbolism in Zambia’s heraldry (ZT, Issue 13, June 2013)
Zambia’s national anthem: a history (ZT, Issue 13, June 2013)
That versatile chitenge (ZT, Issue 13, June 2013)
The first newspaper in Zambia (ZT, Issue 13, June 2013)

Read more from the region in our destination guide:
Livingstone Destination Profile

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