The Sowetan  Newspaper South Africa is an English language, South African daily newspaper that started in 1981 as a liberation struggle newspaper and was freely distributed to households in the then apartheid-segregated township of Soweto, Johannesburg, Gauteng Province.

Currently The Sowetan is one of the largest national newspapers in South Africa. Regarded as having a left-leaning editorial tone, it carries a readership of almost 2 million and a circulation of 124,000 in 2006.

The newspaper is property of South African media company Avusa. Before that it belonged to Dr. Nthato Motlana (1925- Nov. 30, 2008), a prominent South African businessman, physician and anti-apartheid activist, who took a leading role in the formation of the New African Investments Limited, or NAIL, which purchased The Sowetan following apartheid.