"The Bantu World" was founded in April 1932 for an intended audience of black middle-class elite by Bertram Paver, a white ex-farmer. Paver modeled "The Bantu World" after British tabloids. The newspaper had a national distribution, in contrast to the primarily local reach of previous black-owned papers. Half of the 38 shareholders were black Africans by the end of 1932. Each issue consisted of about 20 pages, of which 13 were written in English, and the rest in a variety of indigenous languages. The caption for an image from historian Luli Callinicos' "Working Life" (1987) suggests that "The Bantu World" operated out of the western Johannesburg suburb of Westdene.