 Editor Thulani Mbathi describes their target market as "the modernising Zulu ... [s]omeone who may go back home to the rural areas to slaughter a cow to amadlozi [the ancestors], but is as equally comfortable taking his family out for dinner and a movie in a shopping mall".In June 2004, "Isolezwe" launched their online edition; their fellow Independent News & Media publications described it as the first Zulu-language news website.In the five years after its founding, it performed much better than Independent's English-language South African dailies, growing from a circulation of under 30,000 to more than 95,000, according to Audit Bureau of Circulations figures.