Your Sundays are getting smarter!

Your Sundays are about to get a lot smarter, with a new-look Sunday Times on your doorstep from next week, June 25.

Expect a brighter, more modern look in your favourite Sunday read. Our team of top designers, assisted by some of the world’s best newspaper design gurus, have been working for months to bring you a product that will package your news and features in new and exciting ways.

Amid the changes to the Sunday Times, which celebrates its 111th birthday this year, expect continuity, too. So you’ll still get the hottest news that those in power do not want you to know, the most exciting sport, the latest business news and analysis in Business Times, and all the other supplements you’ve come to rely on, among them Lifestyle, Travel, Home and Motoring.

We’ve put in the hard work — now all you have to do is enjoy.

Take a trip down memory lane

Scroll through our gallery of Sunday Times front pages through the decades:

Notes on some of our historic front pages

February 4 1906

The first edition of the Sunday Times was printed on February 4 1906. The first front page looks grey and boring today, but the drama behind it was far from dull!

Newspapers at the time were not supposed to be bought or read on a Sunday. The clergy lashed this blasphemous upstart and in notices nailed to church doors told their congregants not to buy it. 

But people flocked to buy it. The paper sold out as the steam presses rolled off the first copies and more had to be printed. Within months the Sunday Times had the biggest circulation of any newspaper on the continent.

The paper’s populist voice struck an immediate chord with the readers in the rough,  frontier heart of Johannesburg. Its founder, George Kingswell, vowed that the paper would be "tied to the heels of no political party".

He advised his successor: "Dip your pen in gall. Don’t be afraid of libel. They threaten all kinds of things here, hoping to gag the press. But they cannot gag the Sunday Times."

December 20 1914

World War One, the war to end all wars, was declared on July 28 1914. The Sunday Times joined in demonising the enemy, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany.

The paper devoted a lot of coverage on shaming "slackers" – men who did not enlist to fight in the war.

One of the early photographs shows a burning department store in Rissik Street. on Wednesday May 12 1915, a week after the Lusitania passenger liner was torpedoed by a German submarine. 

One cartoon, "The Shame Of It", shows a devastated mother with the caption:

The Son: "Mother, grieve not for your sons who fell doing their duty."

The Mother: "My son, I grieve most for my sons who cannot see their duty."

The Sunday Times lauded the bravery of South African soldiers who fought at Delville Wood in 1916. It was one of the critical battles of the car and one of the most bloody. They were ordered to "hold it at all costs". About 3,400 members of the South African Brigade marched in to Delville Wood. Six days later only three officers and 140 men were fit enough to march out. "It was a perfect inferno," an officer told the Sunday Times.

After Dellville Wood, nicknamed "The Devil’s Wood", a soldier told the Sunday Times: "I wish to goodness we could wipe it off or burn it off the the map with a good forest fire and clear the ground of the filthy wreckage of trees and deathtraps."

"Chook" Dawson, who edited the Sunday Times from 1942 to 1947, was a hero at Dellville Wood. He saved a comrade during this battle.

The enemy German soldiers were thoroughly demonised by the paper. One report spoke of cannibalism among the German soldiers and the corpses of friends or foes being prepared by trusted staff as "rissoles, sausages or meat for stew".

On September 13 1914, the Sunday Times spoke about the "keen and enthusiastic" response among the "coloured people of South Africa" to the call to arms.

The Sunday Times went to war with copies circulating among soldiers on the front. It also lashed "slackers in skirts" women on the home front who did nothing to aid the war effort.

July 20 1969

This is the most momentous flight in history, the Sunday Times declared on July 20 1969.

The paper came out before Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon as part of the US Apollo II mission. "This epoch-making event is now only a matter of hours away," it wrote.

"The fantastic achievement of Man landing on the moon will happen today, in your lifetime, making it possible for you, the reader of the Sunday Times, to hold in your hands at this moment the most staggering headline ever written: MAN ON THE MOON TODAY."

The paper remarked that "fifty years from now, flights to the moon may be commonplace, but today the event is staggering".

November 29 1987

The worst aviation disaster in South African history struck on November 28 1987 when Flight SA 295 disappeared 160km off the coast of Mauritius, killing all on board.

The plane was on a commercial flight from Taiwan to South Africa.

Hours after the tragedy, the Sunday Times had a journalist on board a plane to the scene of the disaster.

The journalist scooped the opposition several times, managing to hitch a ride on an SAA helicopter with its CEO to a ship that had helped salvage parts of the wreckage.

One of the grisly details was the tale of a sea captain who had thrown sheep carcasses out of his deep freezers to make way for bodies found floating in the sea.

From the start there were conspiracy theories about the crash, with theories that arms were part of illegal cargo on the plane. The real story has never been uncovered.

February 11 1990

After nearly three decades in jail, the South African public did not know what Nelson Mandela looked like as pictures of him had been banned. The Sunday Times of February 11 went to print hours before Mandela’s release so the paper carried a photograph taken on the Friday night with then president FW de Klerk.

The Sunday Times reported he was a "lean and healthy" 71-year-old.

"At 3pm this afternoon, Mr Mandela will shut the door of his prison bungalow for the last time, climb into a waiting car and be driven to freedom is an ANC cavalcade," wrote the paper.

The paper reported on "tears and whoops" outside his home in Soweto. "The ground shook to the beat of the toyi-toyi."

February 4 1996

After South Africa’s shock Africa Cup of Nations win, the Sunday Times gloated that in the 20 months since apartheid the country had also won the Rugby World Cup, and that a month before Hansie Cronje and his cricketing team of English cricketers.

"South Africa's national talisman of victory, President Nelson Mandela, threw up his arms and waved his cap in the air yesterday as substitute striker Mark Williams scored in the 73rd minute," the paper described the scene where a crowd of nearly 90,000 had witnessed the country's latest achievement on the field.

It said "no sporting conquest had been sweeter – or done more to unite the nation – than Bafana Bafana’s moment of glory".

 "This was truly the rainbow team, with every colour and corner of our multicultural country present in the mix."

March 25 2001

The Tony Yengeni saga was the first corruption scandal to hit post-apartheid South Africa.

The probe was sparked after media suspicions about how Yengeni had acquired his luxury Mercedes ML 320 worth almost R400,000 at the time.

The Sunday Times proved that the vehicle was ordered as a private staff car for  an employee of DaimlerChrysler Aerospace — the company that had secured a contract to supply tracking radars for the corvette warships bought in the arms deal. 

Government officials accused the Sunday Times of conducting a witchhunt. Adding to the pressure were Yengeni’s credentials as a struggle hero.

Yengeni pleaded to fraud and was sentenced to four years in prison.

With this investigation the Sunday Times set a new benchmark for journalism in post-apartheid South Africa.