A former playboy model holding a mosaic framed picture of the iconic bunny at the Playboy publishing gala event.
Editor Charl du Plessis told the Times that the "hurdle of conservative readers" had proved too much for the magazine.
"We're told from the consumer side that people don't want to be seen buying Playboy. Digital is a more private space, and that is where publishing is heading anyway," he was quoted as saying.
Du Plessis told the newspaper it was not that South Africans were conservative, but that they were hypocritical.
In his opinion, many other men and women's magazines often featured cruder material than Playboy South Africa, and for which they were not chastised.
According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations of South Africa, the magazine's total circulation dropped to 3 839 at some point last year.
Playboy was first published in South Africa from December 1993 to 1996, and was relaunched in March 2011. – Sapa