Umteteli was published by the white-owned Chamber of Mines' Native Recruitment Corporation (NRC). Couzen's (1979: 23) posits that the establishment of Umteteli wa Bantu in May 1920, the year of a major strike was no coincidence. It was set up as an "exercise of soft power" (Erlank, 2019). Erlank notes that "Early editorial comment...was often about how Africans should be thankful for the benefits of both Christianity and European civilisation...Letters to the editor were popular from the paper’s inception, and reader contributions were often in Xhosa or Sotho" (2019: 85)