A 90-year-old journalist, Frans Hugo, travels 1,200km weekly to deliver newspapers to residents of Prieska, a small town in South Africa.

“I keep doing this every Thursday without fail. I will probably stop when I am physically not capable of doing it anymore,” Mr Hugo told AFP.

Despite being a nonagenarian, Mr Hugo still edits and delivers three local newspapers (The Messenger, formerly known as the Victoria West Messenger, Die Noordwester and Die Oewernuus) every Thursday without fail.

Mr Hugo explained that he usually departed Calvinia at 1:30 a.m. in his orange Fiat Multipla vehicle and returned in the early evening after distributing about 1,300 copies, a figure that proved some people still enjoy reading news in print. 

He seemed unimpressed at the idea of people who prefer “to read the news on their cellphones.”

The journalist, who retired to the local region of Karoo, had previously worked in Cape Town and Namibia for almost 30 years until he could no longer “handle the pressure.”

He explained he was offered the newspaper business when he least expected it.

“Just as I was able to take a breath and relax, the man who owned the printers and the newspaper here in Calvinia came to ask me if I was interested in the business.”

He currently runs the business alongside his wife and three other assistants.

One of the newspapers could be dated far back to the 18th century. The Messenger was established in 1875. The other two newspapers, Die Noordwester and Die Oewernuus were founded in the early 1900s. 

The dailies are published in Afrikaan, one of the 11 official languages in South Africa and sold for eight rands.