The South African MAD magazines are simply reprints of the original US series and started in the years 1985 with issue 253. They were published by Republican Press and the magazine ended with number 427 in the year 2010.
Although almost all covers are taken from the US series, they published 3 issues with a non-US cover:
Number 325 is supposed to be a reproduction of the US issue 218.
Number 327 is maybe the only cover with real South African cover art. Unfortunately the name of the artist is unknown (actually we are pretty sure this cover wasn't created by any artist).
Another interesting South African issue is number 382. It is the famous 9-11 cover drawn by John Caldwell, which were pulled from production in the USA. (The whole story about the never-published 9-11 cover can be read here.)
Information for collectors: A complete run of the South African MAD magazine is pretty hard to compile. Reasons:
- Low circulation, especially the younger issue are hard to find
- Collecting MAD or comics isn't very popular in SA, most of the issues have been thrown away
- Transferring money and getting packages from South Africa is expensive and not really secure