OUR STORY
THE CHRONICLE RETURNS
A newspaper lost to time. A name that refused to disappear.
CAPE TOWN — 2026
There are newspapers that are born, flourish and disappear.
There are newspapers whose names become footnotes in history.
And then there is the Cape Chronicle.
Its story begins in the Victorian Cape, passes through the hands of publishers, editors and journalists, disappears into the archives, reappears decades later, vanishes again — and now, more than a century and a half after its earliest known appearance, returns once more.
Only this time, the Chronicle has come back looking for its own past.
CHAPTER I
THE SILBERBAUER YEARS
Cape Town, 1844–1860
Long before there was a website called the Cape Chronicle, there was a printing business in Cape Town.
In 1844, George William Silberbauer established a publication concerned primarily with shipping, trade and mercantile affairs.
It was an age when Cape Town was still a relatively small colonial port, when news arrived by sailing ship and a newspaper could take days — sometimes weeks — to learn what had happened beyond Table Bay.
Then, in 1850, George Silberbauer died.
His widow, Jane Silberbauer, stepped into the breach.
What happened next is one of the most intriguing episodes in the Chronicle’s history.
Jane did not merely continue the family business.
She appears to have transformed it.
The publication became associated with matters far beyond shipping and commerce, entering the noisy world of civic improvement, infrastructure and public debate.
And then came the campaign that would become legendary.
THE WOMAN WHO WANTED CAPE TOWN TO MOVE
Jane Silberbauer and the Tramway Campaign
Cape Town in the middle of the 19th century was growing.
Its streets were busy with pedestrians, carts, horses and omnibuses. Commerce was expanding. The population was increasing. The city was beginning to confront a problem that modern Cape Town knows all too well:
How do you move people efficiently?
In 1860, a technical campaign appeared advocating the development of a horse-drawn tramway.
The article has subsequently been associated with Jane Silberbauer and the Cape Chronicle.
But here the historical trail becomes complicated.
Some sources identify the publication as the Cape Chronicle.
Another source attributes the article to the Shipping Gazette.
A later work, published in 1976 by P. R. Coates, Track and Trackless: Omnibuses and Trams in the Western Cape, refers to the article as appearing in the Cape Chronicle.
The evidence does not yet allow us to close the case.
But whichever publication carried it, the campaign has become an extraordinary part of Cape transport history.
And so the name Jane Silberbauer remains intertwined with the story of a newspaper — and with a city beginning to imagine its modern future.
CHAPTER II
THE MISSING YEARS
1861–1869
Then the trail goes cold.
Or perhaps it doesn’t.
It simply becomes harder to follow.
For years, historians and researchers have wrestled with conflicting dates surrounding the Cape Chronicle.
Was it founded in 1850?
Did it begin in 1860?
Was 1861 the real starting point?
Or did another edition emerge in 1870?
The mystery deepens with surviving references.
One particularly tantalising piece of evidence comes from 13 September 1861.
On that date, an advertisement appeared in the Cape Chronicle announcing a newly formed sixteen-piece Quadrille Band.
J. Jacobs, described as a professor of music lately arrived from Germany, and P. van der Schyff announced that their band was available for balls, picnics and other assemblies.
It is an insignificant advertisement by modern standards.
But to a historian hunting for evidence, it is gold.
Because it proves one thing:
The Cape Chronicle was there.
And it was publishing.
CHAPTER III
THE PRINCE ARRIVES
7 September 1860
Another surviving reference takes us back even further.
An article entitled:
“Grand fete and fair in honour of H.R.H. Prince Alfred”
appeared in the Cape Chronicle on 7 September 1860.
The reference has been cited by historian Dennis Constant Martin in his work on the history of Cape popular culture.
Suddenly, the Chronicle’s timeline moves again.
The dates refuse to behave.
And somewhere in the stacks of South African newspapers, libraries and archives may lie the missing pieces.
The National Library of South Africa is understood to hold copies dating as far back as 1859.
If those copies can be confirmed, the history of the Chronicle may have to be rewritten once again.
And that is precisely why the investigation continues.
CHAPTER IV
WILLIAM FOSTER AND THE LAST CHRONICLE
Cape Town, circa 1870–1871
By the time the Cape entered the 1870s, the newspaper business was becoming fiercely competitive.
Cape Town had newspapers, political journals, commercial publications and newspapers representing competing political interests.
Among the figures moving through this crowded world was William Foster, an experienced Cape journalist and political figure who had previously been associated with the Cape Standard.
The Cape Chronicle appeared again during this period.
Its pages carried the familiar ingredients of a Victorian newspaper:
News.
Politics.
Commerce.
Opinion.
Public affairs.
The life of the Colony.
But its final chapter was approaching.
THE LAST EDITION
4 June 1871
On 4 June 1871, the original Cape Chronicle is believed to have ceased publication.
A month later, the Fort Beaufort Advocate delivered its obituary.
The newspaper had, according to the report, been a well-conducted Cape Town weekly.
But it was gone.
The editor reportedly blamed the collapse partly on a failure to insist upon subscriptions being paid in advance.
A rather ordinary financial problem.
And yet, with that failure, another Cape newspaper disappeared.
The Chronicle was dead.
Or so it seemed.
THEN CAME ANOTHER NEWSPAPER
Port Elizabeth, 1871
The same newspaper report contained another curious announcement.
A new paper was apparently about to be established in Port Elizabeth on the premises formerly occupied by the Cape Mercantile Advertiser.
Research suggests that this publication may have been the Port Elizabeth Telegraph.
It would later appear under the title:
Port Elizabeth Telegraph and Eastern Province Standard
and eventually:
Cape Daily Telegraph.
Was this connected to the dying Chronicle?
Was it simply another newspaper beginning at the same time?
Or was there a deeper connection?
The evidence is tantalising.
The investigation continues.
CHAPTER V
THE NAME REFUSES TO DIE
1996–2001
For more than a century, the Chronicle name appears to have disappeared from the newspaper landscape.
Then, in the late 20th century, it returned.
Research has uncovered a Cape Chronicle registered as a Closed Corporation in 1996 by Roger Mellvil in Tokai.
A company bearing the same name was also registered in Milnerton.
The Chronicle appears to have circulated again during the late 1990s and into the early 2000s.
Its story eventually became entangled with the events surrounding the Cape Odyssey “sales rep” scandal.
It was another incarnation.
Another chapter.
Another disappearance.
But the name survived.
Again.
CHAPTER VI
THE RESURRECTION
2023
In February 2023, a new Cape Chronicle began taking shape.
There was no grand printing press.
No composing room filled with type.
No clatter of Linotype machines.
No newsroom overlooking Adderley Street.
There was simply an idea.
Could the history of the Cape be reported as news again?
Not as a dry historical textbook.
Not as a list of dates.
Not as something that happened to other people in another century.
But as news.
Live.
Immediate.
Personal.
As though the reporter had been standing there when the train arrived.
As though the journalist had been in the crowd when the speech was delivered.
As though the photographer had been standing in the street when the procession passed.
The Cape Chronicle was reborn.
THEN, THE LIGHTS WENT OUT
The first modern Chronicle did not survive.
The website was eventually deleted after difficulties maintaining the hosting account.
A notification was sent.
The account was suspended.
And the work disappeared.
For a while, it seemed that the Chronicle had suffered the same fate as its Victorian predecessor.
But there was one important difference.
This time, the story wasn’t finished.
CHAPTER VII
2026 — THE RETURN
The Chronicle is back.
Its publisher and editor-in-chief, Driko Maritz, has returned to the project with an even greater ambition.
The mission is no longer simply to create another online magazine.
It is to reconstruct a newspaper.
A newspaper that never quite existed in the form we are creating today — but one that allows readers to experience the Cape through the eyes of its own time.
We are going back.
To the streets.
To the railway stations.
To the docks.
To the markets.
To Parliament.
To the farms.
To the villages.
To the theatres.
To the hotels.
To the places where ordinary people lived extraordinary lives.
NEWS FROM THE PAST
AS IT HAPPENED
Imagine that it is 1863.
A railway has just opened.
You don’t know what will happen next.
You haven’t read the history book.
You don’t know that railways will transform the Colony.
You are simply a reader holding today’s newspaper.
That is the experience we want to recreate.
The Cape Chronicle tells historical stories from the perspective of the moment in which they occurred.
The future is unknown.
The outcome is uncertain.
The people involved don’t know how history will remember them.
And neither should the reader.
THE MODERN NEWSROOM
Much of the Chronicle’s reconstructed historical journalism and visual material is produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence.
But AI is a tool — not an authority.
Historical information is researched using surviving newspapers, books, archival references, photographs, published works and other available sources.
Where the evidence conflicts, we say so.
Where something remains uncertain, we say so.
And where a reader finds an error, we want to hear about it.
The Chronicle is an evolving historical project.
Every correction makes the story better.
Every newly discovered newspaper makes the picture clearer.
Every forgotten advertisement can open another window onto the past.
THE CHRONICLE IS NOT A HISTORY TEXTBOOK
There is a reason our stories sometimes look different from conventional history.
We are not trying to write history from the safety of hindsight.
We are trying to recreate the experience of reading about history while it was happening.
That means uncertainty.
Speculation clearly identified as such.
Historical reconstruction.
Period-inspired writing.
And, occasionally, a little theatrical licence.
The result is not intended to replace academic research or primary historical sources.
It is intended to make people curious enough to go looking for them.
WHY BLACK AND WHITE?
Look closely at the Chronicle.
The photographs are old.
The typography is old.
The pages look old.
And then, suddenly, you might encounter a modern business advertisement in full colour.
That is intentional.
The Chronicle’s visual identity draws inspiration from the newspapers and photography of the 19th century.
Colour printing did not become commonplace in the Cape in the way modern readers know it today.
So we have embraced the monochrome world of the Victorian newspaper.
But we have also broken the rules.
Because this is a modern publication pretending — just a little — to be an old one.
That contradiction is part of the fun.
THE GREAT CHRONICLE MYSTERY
The greatest story in the Cape Chronicle may ultimately be the story of the Cape Chronicle itself.
Was it born in 1844?
1850?
1859?
1860?
1861?
1870?
Was Jane Silberbauer its pioneering editor?
Was William Foster responsible for another incarnation?
Were there several unrelated publications using the same name?
What happened to the paper after 1871?
How did the name return in the 1990s?
And why, after disappearing again, has it returned in 2026?
We don’t yet have all the answers.
But we have something better.
A trail.
And we intend to follow it.
THE NEXT EDITION HAS ALREADY HAPPENED
History is full of stories waiting to be rediscovered.
Some are famous.
Most are not.
A railway station opens.
A ship arrives.
A new shop advertises its wares.
A politician makes an unpopular speech.
A band plays at a public gathering.
A hotel opens its doors.
A storm strikes the coast.
A town celebrates.
Someone gets married.
Someone gets arrested.
Someone invents something.
Someone starts a newspaper.
And somewhere, a journalist writes it all down.
Those are the stories we are looking for.
WELCOME TO THE CAPE CHRONICLE
So, open the newspaper.
Forget — just for a moment — what you already know.
Forget the benefit of hindsight.
Forget the history books.
Imagine yourself standing in the street.
The horse-drawn carriages are passing.
The printers are working late.
A newspaper boy is shouting the latest edition.
Cape Town is changing.
The Cape Colony is changing.
And tomorrow’s history has not yet been written.
You are there.
The Cape Chronicle
News from the past — reported as it happened.
THE CHRONICLE CONTINUES
The original newspaper disappeared.
The name survived.
The story was forgotten.
Then rediscovered.
And now, in 2026, the presses are rolling again.
Not with ink and lead type.
But with pixels.
Not from a Victorian printing room.
But from a modern newsroom.
And not merely to tell you what happened.
But to take you there.
Welcome back to the Cape Chronicle.