Early years
Radio broadcasting began in South Africa in 1923. The SABC was established in 1936 through an Act of Parliament, and replaced the previous state-controlled African Broadcasting Corporation, formed in 1927, which was dissolved in the same year. It was a state monopoly for many years, and was controlled by the government. During National Party rule from 1948 onwards, it came under increasing criticism and accusations of being biased towards the then ruling party. At one time most of its senior management were members of the Broederbond, the Afrikaner secret society and later drawn from institutions like Stellenbosch University. It was also known officially in Afrikaans as Suid-Afrikaanse Uitsaaikorporasie (SAUK), but this term is now only used by the SABC when referring to the Corporation in the spoken word on SABC2’s Afrikaans TV news and on the Afrikaans radio station RSG. Although, the Afrikaans newscasts on SABC2 uses SABC Nuus instead of SAUK Nuus. The term is also still widely used by Afrikaans print media.
The SABC was a Radio service, as television was only introduced into South Africa in the 1970s. There were three main SABC radio stations: The English Service, the Afrikaans Service and the commercial station, Springbok Radio. Programs on the English and Afrikaans services mainly consisted of the news, radio plays, such as “The Forsyte Saga”, “Story of an African Farm”, “The Summons” written and produced in South Africa, serious talk shows, BBC radio shows, children’s programming, such as Sound Box, light music broadcasts featuring South African talent, such as orchestras, arrangers, musicians and singers. The most renowned orchestral arrangers were Art Heatlie, Gerry Bosman, Dan Hill and Rollo Scott, head of the SABC music department. Accomplished musicians such as Kenny Higgins and pianist and composer, Charles Segal were featured on all three stations on a regular basis in shows like “Piano Playtime” and accordionist Nico Carstens was a regular on the Afrikaans programs. Springbok Radio was a bilingual commercial station, featuring a wide variety of programming, such as morning talk and news, game shows, soap operas, children’s programming, music request programs, top-ten music, talent shows and other musical entertainment and comedy shows such as the very popular Saturday noontime show, “Telefun Time”, where comedians like Steve Segal would phone various people and conjur up situation comedy. Telefun Time was similar to the USA shows, Candid Camera and, much later, Punk’d.
Until 1979, the SABC also operated broadcasting services in Namibia, which was then under South African rule, but in that year, these were transferred to the South West African Broadcasting Corporation (SWABC). This, in turn, became the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) after the country’s independence in 1990.
Recent history
In 1996, the SABC and its services were restructured to better serve and reflect the fresh democratic society of post-1994 South Africa – notably by reducing Afrikaans airtime on television. These actions, combined with the disposal of many of the ‘historic’ remnants of Afrikaans-dominated broadcasting (such as the Liewe Heksie puppets) have been labelled ‘revenge’ by some commentators. The SABC has since been accused of favouring the ruling ANC political party, mostly in the area of news broadcasting. However, it remains the dominant player in the country’s broadcast media.
Criticism towards the public broadcaster intensified around 2003–2005, when it was accused of a wide range of shortcomings including self-censorship, lack of objectivity and selective news coverage.
Kaizer Kganyago, the spokesperson for the SABC, is also a member of the International Advisory Board of the African Press Organization.
Radio
Establishment
The SABC was established by an Act of Parliament in 1936 taking over from the African Broadcasting Company which had been responsible for some of the first radio broadcasts in South Africa in the 1920s. The SABC established services in what were then the country’s official languages, English and Afrikaans, with broadcasts in languages such as Zulu, Xhosa, Sesotho and Tswana following later. The SABC’s first commercial service, started in 1950, was known as Springbok Radio, broadcasting in English and Afrikaans. Regional FM music stations were started in the 1960s. In the 1960s, when British rule ended in South Africa, the Afrikaners’ goal was to promote their culture and so, at first, the SABC’s choice of popular music reflected the National Party government’s initial conservatism, especially on the Afrikaans channel, with musicians such as Nico Carstens. Eventually, musicians broke through the barrier, when the young, English-speaking Jewish musician and composer, Charles Segal collaborated with the older Afrikaans lyric-writer, Anton Dewaal, to write Afrikaans “liedjies” (songs) that became highly popular with the Afrikaans speaking public. Once his talents gained the respect of the Afrikaans powers in the SABC, Segal was able to establish a foothold for himself and other English-speaking South African musicians to be featured on SABC programs.
However, there was tight censorship in all SABC broadcasts and, for example, some of the music of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones was generally frowned upon, if not banned from the airwaves, in favour of ‘more wholesome’ music.
In 1966 the SABC established an external service, known as Radio RSA, which broadcast in English, Swahili, French, Portuguese, Dutch and German. In 1969 the SABC held a national contest to find theme music for Radio RSA. This contest was won by the popular South African pianist and composer, Charles Segal and co-writer, Dorothy Arenson. Their composition, “Carousel” remained the theme song for Radio RSA right through to the 1990s. Radio RSA is now known as Channel Africa.
1996 restructuring
In 1996 the SABC carried out a significant restructuring of their services. The main English-language radio service became SAfm. The new service, after some initial faltering, soon developed a respectable listenership and was regarded as a flagship for the new democracy. However, government interference in the state broadcaster in 2003 saw further changes to SAfm which reversed the growth and put it in rapid decline once more.[citation needed] Today it attracts only 0.6% of the total population to its broadcasts. The main Afrikaans radio service was renamed Radio Sonder Grense (literally ‘Radio Without Borders’) in 1995 and has enjoyed greater success with the transition.
Similarly, SABC Radio’s competitors have achieved great levels of popular appeal. Primedia-owned Radio 702, Cape Talk and 94.7 Highveld Stereo have grown steadily in audience and revenue through shrewd management since the freeing of the airwaves in South Africa. Other stations such as the black-owned and focused YFM and Kaya FM have also shone, attracting audiences drawn from the black majority.
SABC logo, used from 1976 to 1996.
In 1975, after years of controversy over the introduction of television, the SABC was finally allowed to introduce a colour TV service, which began experimental broadcasts in the main cities on 5 May 1975, before the service went nationwide on 6 January 1976. Initially, the TV service was funded entirely through a licence fee, as in the UK, but advertising began in 1978. The SABC (both Television and Radio) is still partly funded by the licence fee (currently R250 per annum).
The service initially broadcast only in English and Afrikaans, with an emphasis on religious programming on Sundays.
A local soap opera, The Villagers, set on a gold mine, was well received while other local productions like The Dingleys were panned as amateurish. Owing to South Africa’s apartheid policies, the British actors’ union Equity started a boycott of programme sales to South Africa, meaning that the majority of acquired programming in the early years of the corporation came from the United States. However, the Thames Television police drama series The Sweeney was briefly shown on SABC TV, dubbed in Afrikaans as Blitspatrollie. Later on, when other programmes were dubbed, the original soundtrack was simulcast on FM radio.
The SABC TV also produced lavish musical shows featuring the most popular South African composers, solo musicians, bands and orchestras. For example, well-known South African pianist and composer, Charles Segal, was given a half hour special show: The Music of Charles Segal, where a selection of Segal’s music was performed by various South African artists, such as Zane Adams, SABC Orchestra, Charles Segal and others.
With a limited budget, early programming aimed at children tended to be quite innovative, and programmes such as the Afrikaans-language puppetshows Haas Das se Nuus Kas and Oscar in Asblikfontein are still fondly remembered by many.
In 1 January 1982, two channels were introduced, TV2 broadcasting in Zulu and Xhosa and TV3 broadcasting in Sotho and Tswana. Later was launched TV4, broadcasting for black urban audience. The main channel, then called TV1, was divided evenly between English and Afrikaans, as before. Subtitling on TV in South Africa used to be almost non-existent, although now many non-English language soap operas have started to display English subtitles. The second channel, known either as TV2, TV3 or TV4 depending on the time of day, was in 1994 rebranded as CCV (Contemporary Community Values). A third channel was introduced known as TSS, or Topsport Surplus. Topsport being the brand name for the SABC’s sport coverage, but this was renamed NNTV (National Network TV).
SABC television become widely available in neighbouring Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland. The SABC also helped the South West African Broadcasting Corporation in Namibia to establish a television service in 1981 with most programming being videotapes flown in from South Africa. This became part of the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation in 1990.
Competition and restructuring[edit]
In 1986, the SABC’s monopoly on TV was challenged by the launch of a subscription-based service known as M-Net, which was backed by a consortium of newspaper publishers. This service was disallowed from broadcasting its own news and current affairs programmes, which are still the preserve of the SABC. The SABC’s dominance was further eroded by the launch of the first ‘free-to-air’ private TV channel, e.tv. Satellite television expanded when M-Net’s sister company, Multichoice, launched its digital satellite TV service (DStv) in 1995. SABC TV channels are broadcast via this satellite television, as well.
In 1996, the SABC reorganised its three TV channels with the aim of making them more representative of the various language groups. These new channels were called SABC 1, SABC 2 and SABC 3. The SABC also absorbed the Bop TV station, of the former Bophuthatswana bantustan.
Expansion
In 1999, the SABC began to broadcast two TV channels to the rest of African continent: SABC Africa, a news service, and Africa 2 Africa, entertainment programming from South Africa and other African countries. In 2003, Africa 2 Africa was merged with SABC Africa. SABC Africa’s news bulletins are also carried on the Original Black Entertainment (OBE) satellite television channel in the UK.
The SABC has announced launch of two regional South African television channels, SABC4 and SABC5, which will emphasise languages other than English. SABC4 will broadcast in Tswana, Sesotho, Pedi, Tsonga, Venda, and Afrikaans as well as English, to the northern provinces of the country. In the southern provinces, SABC5 will broadcast in Xhosa, Zulu, Ndebele, and Swazi, as well as Afrikaans and English. Unlike other SABC TV services, SABC4 and SABC5 will not be available via satellite.
According to the SABC, the factors which are considered when deciding how much time a language gets on television are the following: how many home language speakers exist in the coverage area of a channel; the geographical spread of the language; the extent to which members of a language community are able to understand other languages; the extent of marginalisation of a language; the extent to which the language is understood by other South Africans; and whether there is available content that uses the language.
SABC TV has an audience of over 30 million] SABC1 reaches 89% of the public, SABC2 reaches 91% of the public, and SABC3 reaches 77% of the public, according to the broadcaster. The SABC has 18 radio stations, which have more than 25 million weekly listeners.[
Opposition politicians of the ANC often level criticism at the SABC of it being an ANC mouthpiece, a charge that the broadcaster also faced under the previous Nationalist government. Despite a change in government, this public perception was reinforced when, in August 2005, the SABC came under heavy fire from independent media and the public for failing to broadcast footage wherein Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka was booed offstage by members of the ANC Youth League, who were showing support for the newly axed ex-Deputy President, Jacob Zuma.[
Rival broadcaster eTV publicly accused SABC of ‘biased reporting’ for failing to show the video footage of the humiliated Deputy President. Snuki Zikalala, Head of News and ex-ANC spokesperson retorted that their cameraman had not been present at the meeting. This claim was later established to be false when eTV footage was released which showed an SABC cameraman filming the incident.
The SABC’s government connections also came under scrutiny when, in April 2005, Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe was interviewed live by Zikalala, who is a former ANC political commissar.[14] The interview was deemed by the public to have sidestepped ‘critical issues’, and to have avoided difficult questions regarding Mugabe’s radical land-reform policies and human rights violations.
In May 2006, the SABC was accused of self-censorship when it decided not to air a documentary on South African President Thabo Mbeki, and in early June 2006, the news organisation requested that the producers (from Daylight Films) not speak about it. This was widely criticised by independent media groups.In response, the International Freedom of Expression Exchange issued an alert concerning the SABC’s apparent trend toward self-censorship.
In June 2006, the International Federation of Journalists denounced the cancelling of the Thabo Mbeki documentary, citing “self-censorship” and “politically-influenced managers”.[
Also in June 2006, SAfm host John Perlman disclosed on air that the SABC had created a blacklist of commentators. A commission of inquiry was created by SABC CEO Dali Mpofu to investigate the allegations that individuals had been blacklisted at the behest of Zikalala. Perlman eventually resigned from SAfm, and the broadcaster came under heavy criticism from free media advocates.
Shortly before the ANC’s 2012 elective conference in Mangaung, the board of the SABC handed control of news, television, radio and sport to COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng. The board’s decision was interpreted by some at the SABC as a calculated attempt to ensure that an ANC faction close to President Jacob Zuma was given positive coverage. During a press conference held by the SABC on 6 December 2012, to explain why it had prevented three journalists from participating in a discussion on how the media would cover the ANC’s elective conference in Manguang, Hlaudi Motsoeneng said that whenever the ANC is discussed on the SABC an ANC party representative must be present.
In April 2014, journalists were warned by SABC chairperson, Ellen Zandile Tshabalala, that their phones were being wiretapped by the NIA, and reminded them to be loyal to the ANC ruling party. When challenged on the matter, Tshabalala insisted that her comments had been taken out of context. The scandal erupted at the same time that the DA official opposition accused the SABC of censorship] when they stopped airing a television advert that referred to the ongoing Nkandlagate scandal.
In February 2015, the SABC was accused of censoring video and audio feeds of the State of the Nation address in Parliament, after opposition party EFF was forcefully ejected by armed plain-clothes policemen after interrupting the President’s speech. Footage of opposition party DA walking out in protest over the presence of the armed personnel was also censored. This was in addition to the presence of a signal-jamming device that prevented journalists and MP’s from being able to use their mobile devices to post news online.
Cultural bias
Critics, including the Mail and Guardian (Vol 24, No 35), have accused the broadcaster of failing to recognise and cater to the diverse cultural mix of South Africa, and of excessively favouring certain ethnic groups in their entertainment offerings, particularly through their TV channels.
Television in South Africa was introduced in 1976. South Africa was relatively late in introducing television broadcasting to its population.
Opposition to introduction
Even though the state-controlled South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) had a virtual monopoly on radio broadcasting, it also saw the new medium as a threat to Afrikaans and the Afrikaner volk, giving undue prominence to English, and creating unfair competition for the Afrikaans press.
Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd compared television with atomic bombs and poison gas, claiming that “they are modern things, but that does not mean they are desirable. The government has to watch for any dangers to the people, both spiritual and physical.”\
Dr. Albert Hertzog, Minister for Posts and Telegraphs at the time, said that TV would come to South Africa “over [his] dead body denouncing it as “a miniature bioscope [cinema] over which parents would have no control.”[ He also argued that “South Africa would have to import films showing race mixing; and advertising would make [non-white] Africans dissatisfied with their lot.” The new medium was then regarded as the “devil’s own box, for disseminating communism and immorality”.
However, many white South Africans, including some Afrikaners, did not share Hertzog’s “reactionary” views and regarded the hostility towards what he called “the little black box” as irrational. When Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the Moon in 1969, South Africa was one of the few countries unable to watch the event live, prompting one newspaper to remark, “The moon film has proved to be the last straw… The situation is becoming a source of embarrassment for the country.” In response to public demand, the government arranged limited viewings of the landing, in which people were able to watch recorded footage for 15 minutes.
The opposition United Party pointed out that even less economically advanced countries in Africa had already introduced television, while neighbouring Rhodesia had introduced it by 1957, the first English-speaking country in Africa to do so.
In the absence of television in South Africa, a radio version of the British television series The Avengers was produced by Sonovision for SABC’s commercial network, Springbok Radio, in 1972. While it only ran for eighteen months, the radio series proved highly popular.
Slow introduction
In 1971, the SABC was finally allowed to introduce a television service. Initially, the proposal was for two television channels, one in English and Afrikaans, aimed at white audiences, and another, known as TV Bantu, aimed at black viewers, but when television was finally introduced, there was only one channel. Experimental broadcasts in the main cities began on 5 May 1975, before nationwide service commenced on 5 January 1976.
In common with most of Western Europe, South Africa used the PAL system for colour television, being only the second terrestrial television service in Africa to launch with a colour-only service. (Zanzibar in Tanzania was the first territory in Africa to do so in 1973.) The Government, advised by SABC technicians, took the view that colour television would have to be available so as to avoid a costly migration from black-and-white broadcasting technology.
Initially, the TV service was funded entirely through a licence fee as in the UK, but advertising began in 1978.
In 1981, a second channel was introduced, broadcasting in African languages such as Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho and Tswana. The main channel, then called TV1, was divided evenly between English and Afrikaans. Subtitling on TV was almost non-existent, the assumption being that people had no desire to watch programmes in languages they did not speak.
In 1986, the SABC’s monopoly was challenged by the launch of a subscription-based service known as M-Net, backed by a consortium of newspaper publishers. However, as part of its licensing restrictions, it could not broadcast news programmes, which were still the preserve of the SABC, although M-Net started broadcasting a current affairs programme Carte Blanche in 1988. As the state-controlled broadcaster, the SABC was accused of bias towards the apartheid regime, giving only limited coverage to opposition politicians.\
Programming[
Imported programming[
Owing to South Africa’s apartheid policies, the British Actors’ Equity Association started a boycott of programme sales to South Africa. This, combined with a similar boycott by Australia, meant that South African TV was dominated by programming from the United States, and it was only after the end of apartheid that the boycott was lifted and non-US programming became much more widely available.
Many imported programmes were dubbed into Afrikaans, the first being the British series The Sweeney, known in Afrikaans as Blitspatrollie. However, in order to accommodate English speakers, the SABC began to simulcast the original soundtrack of American series such as Miami Vice and Beverly Hills, 90210 on an FM radio service called Radio 2000. They especially do not get the popular American television series Las Vegas. This also applied to German and Dutch programmes dubbed in Afrikaans, such as the German detective series Derrick, and the Dutch soap opera Medisch Centrum West, also known as Hospitaal Wes Amsterdam.
Local programming
There are currently many South African-produced programmes which are shown across Africa and around the world. For example, SABC 3’s scifi/drama series Charlie Jade, a co-production between the Imaginarium and Canada’s CHUM, has been broadcast in over 20 countries, including Japan, France, South Korea, and in the United States on the Sci-Fi Channel. M-Net’s soap opera Egoli: Place of Gold, has been shown in 43 African countries, and has even been exported to Venezuela, where it has been dubbed in Spanish. The drama series Shaka Zulu, based on the true story of the Zulu warrior King Shaka, was shown around the world in the 1980s, but this was only possible because the SABC had licensed the series to a US distributor. The Zulu-language comedy ‘Sgudi ‘Snaysi achieved SABC’s highest viewing figures in the late 1980s, and was shown in Zimbabwe and Swaziland.
Political change
Following the easing of media censorship under State President F. W. de Klerk, the SABC’s news coverage moved towards being more objective, although many feared that once the African National Congress (ANC) came to power, the SABC would revert to type and serve the government of the day. However, the SABC now also carried CNN International’s TV news bulletins, thereby giving South African viewers new sources of international news.
On 4 February 1996, two years after the ANC came to power, the SABC reorganised its three TV channels, so as to be more representative of different language groups.] This resulted in the downgrading of Afrikaans’ status by reducing its airtime from 50% to 15%, a move that alienated many Afrikaans speakers.
New services
The launch of PanAmSat’s PAS-4 satellite saw the introduction of Ku band direct-broadcast satellite broadcasting services on 2 October 1995, soon after MultiChoice launched DStv. Two years later the SABC launched its ill-fated satellite channels, AstraPlus and AstraSport which were intended to catapult the corporation into the Pay TV market called AstraSat but a lack of financial backers and initial insistence on using analogue technology as opposed to digital technology resulted in failure.
The SABC’s monopoly on free-to-air terrestrial television was broken with the introduction of privately owned channel e.tv in 1998. e.tv also provided the first local television news service outside of the SABC stable, although M-Net’s parent company, MultiChoice, offers services such as CNN International, BBC World News and Sky News via direct-broadcast satellite as part of its paid offering.
The first 24-hour local business channel, CNBC Africa was launched in 2007 with eight hours of local programming and the remainder pulled from other CNBC affiliates. CNBC Africa competes with Summit, a business television station owned by media group Avusa, which broadcasts only during evening prime time. Both stations are available only on the MultiChoice direct-to-home platform, although the inclusion of CNBC Africa in the offering of new satellite players seems a near certainty.
In November 2007 regulators announced the award of four new broadcast licences after a process that saw 18 applications. The successful applicants were Walking on Water, a dedicated Christian service, On Digital Media, a broad-spectrum entertainment offering, e.sat, a satellite service from e.tv, and Telkom Media, a company 66% owned by telecommunications operator Telkom Group Ltd. The MultiChoice licence was renewed at the same time.
e.sat decided not to launch services but rather adopt a content provider business model. e.sat launced e.news, a 24-hour news channel, in 2008 on the MultiChoice platform. Telkom Media decided in early 2009 not to pursue the launch of television services as its parent company Telkom did not believe adequate investment returns could be achieved. The remaining licencees were expected to be operational by late 2009 and all will operate direct-to-home services using standard small-aperture satellite dishes. Telkom Media was also granted an IPTV licence.
On Digital Media announced on 18 March 2010 that it would be launching TopTV in May 2010 as a second pay satellite TV competitor. TopTV would offer a total of 55 channels with 25 channels in its basic offering.
Community Television
Another model of public service television, called community television, was introduced to South Africa by legislation known as the Independent Broadcasting Authority Act of 1993. The act enabled three tiers of broadcasting, these being public, commercial, and community. While many community radio stations sprang up from that time, community television was enabled only for temporary event licences of up to four weeks in duration. It was only after the national broadcasting regulator, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), promulgated its position paper on community television in 2004, that longer term licences of up to one year were enabled. This licensing regime was changed in 2010 when the duration for class licenses was set at seven years.
Community television stations must, by law, a) serve a particular community; b) be run by a non-profit organisation; and c) involve members of the community in the selection and production of programming. Issues of frequency availability are complicated by the migration to digital broadcasting. This led ICASA declaring a moratorium on considering new community TV licence applications in March 2010.
The first community television station to get a one-year licence was Soweto TV in 2007. The station serves the southern Johannesburg region and principally Soweto, it is also available by satellite on the MultiChoice platform. The second community television licence was Cape Town TV, first licenced in 2008. The station serves the greater Cape Town metro. It broadcasts locally in Cape Town on two analogue frequencies from a transmitter on the Tygerberg site and is also carried nationally throughout South Africa and Lesotho on the DStv pay-TV platform.
In 2015 there are five licensed community TV broadcasters in South Africa. In addition to the above-mentioned services there is Bay TV in Port Elizabeth, Tshwane TV in Pretoria and 1KZN TV in Richards Bay. All of these channels have seven-year ‘class’ licenses. In 2014 these channels collectively reached an audience of around 12 million[22] viewers and all are carried both terrestrially on local analogue frequencies as well as nationally on pay-TV platforms, principally DStv.
Digital technology
The first digital television implementation in South Africa was a satellite-based system launched by pay-TV operator MultiChoice in 1995. On 22 February 2007, the South African government announced that the country’s public TV operators would be broadcasting in digital by 1 November 2008, followed by a three-year dual-illumination period which would end on 1 November 2011.
On 11 August 2008, the Department of Communications announced its Broadcasting Digital Migration Policy. The policy will govern the switchover from analogue to digital transmission, and states that the Department will provide funding to the national signal distributor Sentech to begin the migration process according to the published timetable. The timetable is phased as follows which is a delay of 4 years from the original one proposed:
8 August 2008 – MultiChoice launches South Africa’s first HDTV channel (DStv channel 170)
2013 – begin digital transmissions (DTV)
2015 – ~100% digital coverage and switch-off of all remaining analogue transmitters
The government’s stated goal to have digital television as well as mobile television up and running in time for the 2010 FIFA World Cup tournament to be hosted by South Africa, failed.
Satellite television
South African-based MultiChoice’s DStv is the main digital satellite television provider in Sub-Saharan Africa, broadcasting principally in English, but also in Portuguese, German and Afrikaans.
In May 2010, On Digital Media launched the TopTV satellite television service. It offers a number of South African and international television channels and broadcasts principally in English, but also in Hindi, Portuguese and Afrikaans.
Dubai-based Strong Technologies l.l.c. offers My TV which offers programming to Sub-Saharan Africa, although it is not targeted specifically to the South African market.
Other Technologies
Satellite television has been far more successful in Africa than cable, because maintaining a cable network is expensive due to the need to cover larger and more sparsely populated areas and the high incidence of cable theft. There are some terrestrial pay-TV and MMDS services.