A magazine written for and by Africans.
It is classified as one of the best African publications ever published in Africa!
The magazine was founded by Robert Crisp and Jim Bailey under the name of African Drum. The first issue was published in 1951. The aim of African Drum was to address the issues and interest of the black South African population.
In the early stages of the magazine, it failed to gain wide circulation. Desperate to bring success to the magazine, Jim Bailey hired close friend Anthony Sampson whilst Crisp left the organization leaving Bailey as the sole owner.
Sampson referred to the magazine being affected by ‘white hand’ which brought down the magazine. Bailey and Sampson sort to make a change.
Sampson and Bailey turned the African Drum into the Drum and gave it a fresh new image which reflected a realistic image of the black culture in South Africa. Sampson credits the words of a Johannesburg boxing promoter by the name of Job Rathebe who said to Bailey:
You see, it’s got the white hand on it—that’s what I call it. Drum’s what white men want Africans to be, not what they are. Now, take this tribal history business, which you call ‘Know Yourselves’: we all know ourselves quite well enough, Mr. Bailey, I assure you. . . We don’t want Drum to remind us. What we want, you see is a paper which belongs to us—a real black paper. We want it to be our Drum, not a white man’s Drum.
The success of the Drum in South Africa led the magazine to become Drum for the whole of Africa rather than just South Africa.
You can read more about the Drum in an essay titled ‘The Drum in Africa’s Media Empire: Drum’s Expansion to Nigeria‘ by Tyler Fleming & Toyin Falola. I can only imagine the cultural impact of this magazine during the 50s. Some South African scholars have even labelled the 50s as ‘The Drum Decade’.
I was asking my Dad whether he knew of the magazine. The way he described it was like how I would have described Smash Hits magazine when I was 10. It was the ‘IT THING’. For me Smash Hits made popular culture! Even though Smash Hits seems trivial compared to the Drum, I can imagine Drum being the ‘IT THING’ for black Africans during the 50s. Drum was portraying the Africa black Africans wanted to see!
SOURCE: GHANA LIFE & FLICKR