The agency was established on July 1, 1938, by major South African newspapers to facilitate the sharing of news. Reuters had dominated the internal supply of news in South Africa until 1938. When SAPA was founded, Reuters retained the exclusive right to supply it with world news. Reuters ended this partnership in 1995, when it began expanding its own Southern African activities in competition with SAPA. In February 1938, the constitution for the new agency was framed, and by April that year, it became a co-operative news agency under the control of every British and Afrikaans newspaper that wished to join.
Exclusively syndicated in Namibia by NAMPA