Television in South Africa
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Although economically the most advanced country on the continent, South Africa was among the last countries in Africa to introduce television.
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Controversy over introduction of TV
The reason for television's late arrival in South Africa was ideological, as the white minority regime saw it as a threat to its control of the broadcasting media, 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 to the Afrikaner volk, giving undue prominence to English, and creating unfair competition for the Afrikaans press.
National Party ministers, like the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, Dr Albert Hertzog, said that TV would come to South Africa 'over my dead body', also denouncing it as 'a miniature bioscope [cinema] over which parents would have no control', while the influential Dutch Reformed Church, saw the new medium as degenerate and immoral.
However, many white South Africans, including Afrikaners, did not share Hertzog's reactionary views, and regarded the hostility towards television as absurd and embarrassing, given that other (supposedly 'less civilised') countries in Africa had already introduced it. Neighbouring Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, had introduced television in 1961, with the financial backing of some South African private investors.
The introduction of TV in 1976
In 1971, the SABC was finally allowed to introduce a television service, which began experimental broadcasts in the main cities in mid-1975, before the service went nationwide at the beginning of 1976. In common with most of Western Europe, South Africa used the PAL system for colour television. Initially, the TV service was funded entirely through a licence fee, as in the UK, but advertising began in 1978.
When South African television launched, it was only the second terrestrial TV service to launch with a colour service only, whereas all other TV stations would have started in black-and-white first, then colour later. (Zanzibar in Tanzania was the first territory in Africa to have done 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 change from black-and-white.
The service only broadcast in English and Afrikaans, with an emphasis on religious programming on Sundays. Owing to South Africa's apartheid policies, the British actors' union Equity started a boycott of programme sales to South Africa, meaning that most acquired programming came from the United States. However, the British police drama series The Sweeney was briefly shown on SABC, but dubbed in Afrikaans.
In 1981, a second channel was introduced, broadcasting in African languages such as Zulu, Xhosa Sotho and Tswana. The main channel, now called TV1, was divided evenly between English and Afrikaans. Even to this day, subtitling on TV remains almost non-existent, the assumption being that people have no desire to watch programmes in languages they do not speak.
In 1986, the SABC's monopoly on TV was challenged by the launch of a subscription-based service known as M-Net, backed by a consortium of newspaper publishers. However, it could not broadcast its own news and current affairs programmes, which were still the preserve of the SABC. As the state-controlled broadcaster, the SABC was accused of bias towards the apartheid regime.
Political change
Following the easing of media censorship under F. W. de Klerk, the SABC's news coverage moved towards being more objective, although many feared that once the African National Congress 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.
In 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, which now had its airtime reduced, a move that angered many whites.
Local programming
While US programming has dominated South African TV airtime, there are now many locally produced programmes, although few are known outside South Africa, and do not travel well. For example, M-Net's soap opera Egoli- Place of Gold, which features characters changing from English to Afrikaans and back, was incomprehensible to viewers in the rest of Africa. The drama series Shaka Zulu, based on the true story of the Zulu warrior King Shaka, was produced in South Africa, and shown around the world in the 1980s.
Children's programming was quite innovative during the late 1970s to early 1980s — the impossiblity of purchasing Thunderbirds forced the SABC to produce their own weekly science-fiction puppet program, Impalas, named after the South African Air Force aerobatic team in the same way as the Thunderbirds were named after the United States Air Force team.
Despite, and perhaps because of the lack of contact with international children's programming, Impalas wound up being technically superior to every aspect of Gerry Anderson's supermarionation techniques:
- Puppets were internally wired, and moveable in a large range of motion.
- Their electronics were able to perform with considerably better motion than any of the Thunderbirds puppets.
- Models had a level of intricacy rivalling Star Wars' vessels.
- Pyrotechnics were also more impressive, with explosions requiring a special permit.
The stories are set in Cape Town, at the location of what is now the V&A Waterfront, eerily predicting the eventual development of that facility. Enemies were aliens from a distant space system — and were unfortunately seen as being the equivalent of black protagonists by journalists overseas. The entire series was produced in Afrikaans.
The same team that produced the Impalas had cut their teeth in the late 1970's with Liewe Heksie, with the same sophisticated puppetry making its first appearance in the adventures of a well-meaning but absent-minded little witch. The internal-wiring puppeteers made their final work a set of musical crickets that played music for a children's program featuring two more puppets, Sarel Seemonster, a friendly sea monster which could blow steam from his nostrils, and Karel Kraai, a crow which was fully functional to the point of being able to remove his hat.
Imported programming
Owing to the British Equity boycott, and a similar boycott by Australia, South African TV has been 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 available.
The availability of US programming was partly the result of a co-operative venture with Universal Studios in 1980 where an episode of 'Knight Rider' was filmed in the Namib desert in South West Africa (today Namibia), and local acting talent was involved in the filming. As a direct consequence, the SABC received the right to broadcast in American programming syndicated from Universal Studios/MCA, and through them purchased material from other studios.
New Services
However, the SABC's dominance was further eroded by the launch of the first 'free-to-air' private TV channel, called e.tv. Satellite television also expanded, as M-Net's parent company, Multichoice, launched its digital satellite TV service (DStv).
DStv offered viewers in South Africa, and elsewhere on the continent, a far greater choice of channels, including international services like CNN, MTV, BBC World, BBC Prime, Discovery Channel, Sky News and ESPN, as well as channels such as Zee TV in Indian languages and RTP Internacional in Portuguese. There were also SABC channels aimed at viewers in the rest of Africa, a business channel, Summit TV, and a music channel, called Channel O, while KykNet catered for Afrikaans speakers.
In 2003, the New South African TV channel (NSAT) announced plans to broadcast on Sky Television in the UK, thereby reaching the large (predominantly white) expatriate community.
External Links
- South African Broadcasting Corporation (http://www.sabc.co.za)
- M-Net (http://www.mnet.co.za)
- Multichoice DStv (http://www.dstv.com)
- etv (http://www.etv.co.za)
- NSAT (http://www.nsat.tv)
- Why South Africa’s Television is only Twenty Years Old: Debating Civilisation, 1958-1969 (http://www2.univ-reunion.fr/~ageof/text/74c21e88-271.html)