De Zuid-Afrikaan

The paper was founded by the advocate Christoffel Johan Brand on 9 April 1830 and played a major role in providing a mouthpiece for the more educated sections of the Cape Dutch community.

[2][3] With the arrival of the 1820 settlers, Thomas Pringle and Abraham Faure were granted permission to produce a monthly newspaper, alternately in English and in Dutch.

On 9 April 1830, an advocate Christoffel Johan Brand together with DG Reitz and JH Neethling established De Zuid-Afrikaan to promote the interests of the Cape Dutch community.

[4] The first editor was Charles Etienne Boniface, whose family had fled France during the French Revolution and who, as a sea cadet, had arrived in the Cape Colony on board a British warship.

The differences between De Zuid-Afrikaan and its English-language rival, The South African Commercial Advertiser were highlighted during the 200th anniversary of the landing of van Riebeeck at the Cape (6 April 1852).

While an editorial in the Advertiser extolled the variety of races and creeds in the Cape, all of whom acknowledged the authority of a common [British] Sovereign, De Zuid-Afrikaan merely commended Faure's sermon in which he gave thanksgiving for the sanctioning of a Christian [Reformed] Church in South Africa.

[9] In common with other Dutch and Afrikaans newspapers, Ons Land supported the former Boer general Botha who became prime minister of the newly formed Union of South Africa in 1910.

Die Burger, in an editorial, declared that the demise of One Land was due to the paper slavishly following the line of its party leaders and neglecting the culture and language of the Afrikaner people.