UPBEAT Magazine 1980s

A brief history of Upbeat 1981-1996

Upbeat was born in 1981 to promote reading in black schools and to address the desperate shortage of quality educational resources available in the black community. Over the years, thousands of teachers have effectively used Upbeat in the classroom and millions of young people have enjoyed learning from the magazine. Towards the end of 1991 Upbeat set itself the task of finding cost-effective strategies for building national distribution. To this end, Upbeat the periodical moved to a commercial distributor. Upbeat published eight issues a year and printed 50,000 copies of each edition. Upbeat‘s reach and role as a radical periodical reflect SACHED’s tenacity and thorough approach to apartheid’s disenfranchisement. This periodical is now an archive of this history of resourcing and support of the black community. A Luta Continua!