In Cape Town, he came into contact with men like Thomas Pringle and John Fairbairn who played a prominent role in establishing the freedom of the press during the autocratic governorship of Lord Charles Somerset.

However, this fails to take into account that for liberals like the editor the locations policy was seen as the only way to ensure that the land rights of tribal people, as well as their customary lifestyle, were protected.

This was followed by a military career of sorts fighting against the BaPedi, under their leader Sekukuni, on behalf of the unpopular president of the South African Republic (ZAR), Thomas Francois Burgers.

The outbreak of the First Anglo-Boer War in December 1880 saw Aylward uncompromisingly on the side of the Boers, and his vocal support of the "enemy" eventually led to his hasty withdrawal from Pietermaritzburg, shortly before the Battle of Majuba.

His return coincided with a political brouhaha over the breakdown of the Wolseley settlement in Zululand – which had seen that territory divided up among 13 chieftains – and the restoration of Cetshwayo as a result of the active lobbying of Bishop Colenso and his family.

The bishop soon found a passionate supporter in Statham, who used The Witness and his position as the special correspondent for the London Daily News to attack what he referred to as "the official clique".

Unfortunately, in the midst of this struggle on behalf of the embattled chief, the fact that Statham had served a jail term in England for embezzlement came to light and was used by his opponents to discredit him.

In contrast to the latter, Longlands seems to have been an intensely private man about whom not a great deal is known despite his long association with The Witness, which continued even after he had relinquished control of the paper to the much younger Ernest Thompson.

The paper's views under these two editors could be described on the whole as being those held by the bulk of colonial society, particularly when it came to the growing crisis with the Boer Republics, which resulted in the South African War (1899–1902).

He began his editorship in somewhat dramatic fashion as a passenger on an Orient Buckboard motorcar, which made the first motor journey between Pietermaritzburg and Durban, an adventure that he described with much relish in the pages of the paper.

By August 1916 the fiction that this would be a short and glorious war was long over and the paper's report on the Somme offensive was headlined “Natal's share of the price being paid for freedom”.

Rose's successor as editor was Desmond Young, later to gain a measure of fame as the author of The Desert Fox, a biography of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel that was turned into a feature film.

While liberal in his views on questions of race, Young did not share Rose's passion for all things British and the paper used its influence to try to bring about greater unity between English- and Afrikaans-speakers, characterised by support for a new national flag and a much more accepting attitude towards Hertzog and Afrikaner aspirations.

Editorially the period up to 1945 was to be dominated by two men, both of whom had studied at Cambridge University, George Calpin and Mark Prestwich, the former as editor and the latter mainly as a leader writer.

Together, the two took a decidedly liberal line on matters of race, even going so far as to compare the conditions of migrant labourers working for certain Witwatersrand gold mines with those in Nazi concentration camps, an issue, with the Second World War raging, very much on everyone's minds.

This was reinforced when he discovered that Calpin had been guilty of releasing confidential information about the running of the company and its financial problems to parties who were making bids to buy the ailing enterprise.

Although the war seemed to hold out hope of an increased demand for hard news on the part of the local population, this was not immediately apparent as the paper experienced a sharp drop in advertising revenue which led to a decision by the board to cut the salaries of 14 members of the business and editorial staff by 12 percent.

Robert Johnston, who had previously worked for the Durban paper, the Natal Mercury, followed him briefly, with Prestwich continuing to play a substantial role as leader writer and part-time editor.

Although Craib's careful management had rescued The Natal Witness from closure, the period under discussion was marked by a need for great financial prudence and the paper in particular remained in the doldrums.

During this period, therefore, the paper was edited by R. W. Talbot, the academic Alan Lennox-Short, later well known to South African radio listeners for his book reviews and expertise in the English language, Raymond O’Shea and Prestwich himself.

Burly and imposing, Eldridge was a newspaperman to his fingertips and his energetic and, at times, idiosyncratic editorship saw the paper's circulation grow to a point where it was no longer under threat of having to surrender to its competitors.

From a news point of view, most of Steyn's editorship was marked by a succession of crises in South Africa, starting with the Soweto Uprising of 1976 and continuing through the turbulent 1980s when an increasingly isolated apartheid government faced popular opposition on an unprecedented scale.

The new editor refused to be cowed by this curtailment of press freedom and the paper continued to report on the particularly troubled situation in Pietermaritzburg, which from 1987 onwards was plunged into violence that verged on civil war.

In fact Steyn's last year as editor coincided with the so-called Seven Days War of 1990, which caused great destruction, loss of life and dislocation in the Edendale valley just outside Pietermaritzburg.

Steyn's period at The Witness saw two important new moves – the appearance in 1979 of Echo, a supplement for black readers, and the installation of a state-of-the-art new press in 1981, which brought the paper into the computer era for the first time.

Steyn's position as editor was filled by David Willers, who, unlike his predecessor, had acquired considerable journalistic experience, having worked previously for the Cape Times.

Although the country had reaching an important milestone with the unbanning of the liberation movements by president F. W. de Klerk during the Opening of Parliament in February 1990, the situation became if anything more dangerous and chaotic as various forces, freed after years of repression, battled for ascendancy.

Possibly because of the extremely edgy nature of the early 1990s, many senior staffers objected to Willers's easygoing management style and this led to internal dissent against the editor in August 1993.

Willers was given the opportunity to restore confidence in his editorship and there were those on the paper who, while recognising the editor's faults in matters of organisation, appreciated the warm, supportive environment he created.

His 15 years at the helm of the paper were not easy as the traditional press had not only to adapt to a new role in post-1994 South Africa, but also to face the assault of new media, such as the Internet and multi-channel satellite television.