The Guardian

The sole national anti-apartheid newspaper in South Africa, the Guardian not only reported on the liberation struggle but led it. Reporting on strikes, repression and political manuevering, the Guardian had great journalists on its staff-novelists like Jack Cope and Alex La Guma; authors like Govan Mbeki, president Thabo Mbeki’s father; Sophiatown reporters like Henry Nxumalo and Tennyson Makiwane; and most famously the writer Ruth First—and a circulation that topped fifty thousand. The apartheid regime banned it three times, charged it with high treason and jailed, house arrested or deported its entire staff, yet for twenty-six tumultuous years the Guardian persisted in reporting one of the great stories of the twentieth century.The Guardian: The History of South Africa’s Extraordinary Anti-Apartheid Newspaper was published in the U.S. by Michigan State University Press and in South Africa by Unisa Press.

In 2008 The Guardian was awarded a bronze medal from the Independent Book Publishers, a so-called Ippy Award. In South African in 2012, a documentary, The Trouble with Truth, was made from the book; James Zug appears in the film.