S.African newspaper launches tabloid aimed at blacks

South Africa’s historic The Star newspaper launched an edition targeting blacks on Monday, hoping to cash in on the country’s growing middle class.

Star Africa is the latest offering of the 125-year-old Star, part of the Irish Independent newspaper group.

It is “an intelligent approach to tabloid journalism”, editor Makhudu Sefara said.

“Our approach is one that says Africa is not about the texture of your hair, it’s about your approach and relation to the content,” Sefara told AFP.

In the paper’s first editorial Makhudu wrote his team believed “there’s a market for this kind of newspaper.”

Star Africa targets black South Africans living in working-class townships on the outskirts of cities, including news and culture from their area, together with content from its broadsheet mother paper.

The majority of South Africa’s urban blacks still live in townships, where they were forced to stay during white-minority rule, which ended in 1994.

Star Africa expands on a previous newspaper, The Star’s Soweto edition, which had been published in the country’s most famous township in Johannesburg.

The new paper’s first front page features an interview with the bodyguard of Chris Hani, former leader of the South African Communist Party, on the 19th anniversary of Hani’s assassination.

Hairstyle tips from pop diva Rihanna’s stylist and a profile of British actor Idris Elba finish off the offering. Elba has just been cast to play Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first black president, in a biopic based on his autobiography, “A Long Walk to Freedom”.

The paper will be sold in northern provinces Gauteng and Limpopo, with plans to expand later.