In the first flush of exhilaration over the birth of the new South Africa, the SABC’s transformational gurus decided that the national Afrikaans Stereo radio channel should be renamed Radiosondergrense (RSG – Radio Without Borders). Nobody could miss the implications. Or the irony. The name deliberately dissociated the station from white Afrikaner racism and the “border wars” provoked by apartheid borders both external, along South Africa militarised northern frontier, and internal, in the townships and rural areas where the attempt to impose Afrikaans as the master-language had provoked the 1976 Soweto uprising.
Borders of the mind too. The majority realised it was time to integrate with the broader nation or disintegrate into factions that could well tear apart the fabric of Afrikaner identity. The poetry of the language, its arts and heritage would outlive the fall of the National Party but if the volk fell out with each other, that was a much more serious threat to the survival of this unique Eurafrican tribe.
The irony was that Afrikaans public radio was no longer in a position to exercise much authority over the volk: the followers were no longer led, the leaders no longer followed. Having shed its ideology of domination, RSG, and commercial stations like OFM (Radio Oranje) now had to seek a new identity in the private thoughts of their listeners. Very subtly, they disinfected all programming of any suggestion that the white herrenvolk were still in charge and still calling the changes.
Radio is at once the most public and the most intimate of media. It is a propaganda platform as much as a theatre of the mind, an arena for demagogues and a place of retreat for those quietly disposed to say, the hell with it all.
Radio penetrates and convinces. In the first half of the 20th century when radio was still a novelty, it was Hitler who discovered the mass political appeal of the medium. He used it, through Dr Josef Goebbels, to plant Nazism in the hearts and minds of millions of listeners. During the war, however, Germans engaged in “black listening” to the BBC which thanks to its reputation for unbiased and trustworthy news coverage was able to advance the Allied war effort.
Radio propaganda came much later to South Africa. In 1959 the head of the Afrikaner Broederbond (AB), Dr Piet Meyer, was appointed chairman of the SABC Board, and during the three decades of his stewardship he firmly cemented the bond between the State and public broadcasting. Meyer ensured that the ideology of white nationalism held sway over news and other programming, while staff were appointed on the basis of their loyalty to or at least acquiescence under the powers-that-be.
A new battle
It all seems such distant history now, but the battle for the heart of Afrikanerdom is not over. Publicly and privately, the struggle continues on radio more than any other medium. This is not surprising: the new broadcasting dispensation since 1994 has licensed community radio stations for the first time, offering cheap and direct access to audiences with few of the capital setup and running costs incurred by newspapers, magazines and television. Given the airwaves to pronounce their views, reactionaries wasted no time shooting down the new Afrikaners.
Radio Pretoria, the voice of conservatism and an ally of all who wanted the old South Africa back, jokingly referred to itself as Radio Met Grense (Radio With Borders). Station manager Jaap Diedericks was quoted recently saying that unless the grievances of the volk were addressed, further violence like the bombings of late 2002 were likely to occur. And he took a sideswipe at the British Empire which was striking back from beyond the grave: “After all we fought for over centuries our kids are now being forced to speak only bloody English.”
Afrikaans radio presents a complex and fascinating picture of a minority ethnic culture in transition.
The bitterenders in Radio Pretoria and its associated stations (see sidebar) are at one extreme, and have been compared to the Basques of northern Spain for their obsessive commitment to self-determination at all costs. The rest of the community radio spectrum is occupied by a variety of stations representing religious, student, and small-town and expatriate interests.
They reflect the growing diversity of the Afrikaans population, regionally, nationally and internationally. Clearly many are divorcing themselves from a purist identity or loyalty to the traditional symbols, but as many again are seeking a home within a changed South Africa turning, for instance, to religious stations which seem to offer some succour for those who feel themselves to be victims of God’s inexplicable designs.
Radio Kansel/Pulpit is a national bilingual station broadcasting in both medium wave and FM and carrying advertising to its listenership of more than 600,000. The community stations range from the likes of Roodepoort-based Radio West Rand, managed and run by former SABC announcer and dominee, Francois Theron; to Radio Kierieman, featuring boeremusiek and special programmes for expatriates on air and streamed via the Internet.
The trend in commercial stations is increasingly towards English in order to attract advertising and cater for black listeners. Radio Jacaranda, which is licensed to be bilingual, commands a massive 1.7 million listeners of which 60 percent are black. Though many listeners are Afrikaans, this station and several other have had to deal with advertising airtime buyers who simply want to pitch English at their audiences.
The Cape’s KFM channel has 861,000 listeners of which 69 percent are Afrikaans/bilingual while the remainder are English or use other European languages. The name KFM was originally an abbreviation of Kontrei FM (Country FM), and the station attracted Coloured people on the Cape Flats and southern Cape. Today, with the slogan, “The best hits and memories”, KFM sells on nostalgia to a racially mixed audience and is broadening its appeal to youth.
Like KFM, Radio Oranje was originally sold off from the SABC stable, and has subsequently been renamed OFM. With the tagline “Number 1 in central South Africa” its footprint stretches across the northwestern Free State, North West province and Northern Cape (Klerksdorp/Bothsabelo/Kimberley), reaching into areas of traditional Afrikanerdom yet garnering a significant number of black listeners too.
“The truth is that the biggest hurdle Afrikaans based media face is the perception by the ad industry of the average Afrikaner,” says Gary Sobel, marketing manager for OFM. “Traditionally run by white, English Gauteng-based graduates, the ad industry continually misses the point when dealing with Afrikaans media, not due to any malice, but simply due to a lack of exposure. I am sure that many black-based media feel much the same way. Stereotypes are easy to work with realities are often not.”
Local advertising revenue at OFM has grown by nearly 20 percent per annum over the past six years, which suggests that the station is the true common carrier for its region, irrespective of language. OFM is two-thirds owned by African Media Entertainment, with Kagiso Media holding about a quarter of the other shares. In January 2002 an application to ICASA to change the ownership conditions affecting OFM, East Coast Radio and Jacaranda to allow New Africa Investments Ltd (Nail) to acquire Kagiso’s shares was rejected. ICASA was adamant that the proposal had not shown enough commitment to transforming the media landscape.
Major stations show a rising trend overall from the year 2000 to the end of 2002. Jacaranda, a bilingual station, has overtaken Radiosondergrense, purely Afrikaans, in the past two years
Transformation and Afrikaans radioThe fact that broadcasting stations are held in private hands does not mean that transformation is a given in the private sector. The fact that many community stations are well disposed to their communities of all races does not mean they are well managed or capable of providing consistently good programming.
So the public broadcaster continues to carry a heavy burden. The biggest of the big five (see chart) is RSG, still owned and controlled by the SABC. It stands to the credit of RSG that the station did manage successfully to reinvent itself and remain an Afrikaans station. It did so by holding to a full-spectrum news-views-and entertainment format for instance keeping the morning drive-time current affairs show, Monitor, followed immediately by its famous lifestyle advice programme, Forum, and, inevitably, lots of churchy stuff.
According to Dr Johannes Froneman, Associate Professor of Media Studies at Potchefstroom University for Higher Christian Education, and an authority on Afrikaans radio, the transformation process at RSG broadened the appeal of the station to numerous “brown Afrikaners” (Coloureds).”The transformation of the broadcasting services especially after the 1994 election was certainly one of the country’s most remarkable transformation phenomena,” Froneman wrote in an article for Literator magazine in 1997. “The process also clearly delivered other effects which have had, or could have, an impact on cultural life overall.”
In an interview with The Media this month, Froneman said he still believed the RSG had successfully changed itself and was changing the values of its listeners. Cultural identities once defined by apartheid were giving way to a new cultural confidence in the world at large. Subtle changes in the names of programmes and the way announcers spoke about Afrikaners had made RSG far more inclusive than in the past.
As the SABC transformed itself into a new multi-ethnic enterprise to promote many languages (all theoretically equal), Afrikaans radio was pinned within new borders. Zulu this side, Sotho that side, and English exercising hegemony over all. Culturally, economically and politically the once mighty voice of State radio dropped its authoritarian tone and began to speak the many languages of market capitalism. Competition became the watchword now, and adspend the method of measuring success.
Afrikaners were not exactly the tribe that lost its head, more like the nation seeking a new frequency on which to communicate, but they had certainly been downgraded.
The established public radio channel has retained its status as the voice of a changing, integrating mainstream Afrikanerdom. At the same time there are plenty of smaller, localised stations that seem to be achieving the same results. I spoke to Francois Theron at Radio West Rand the day after a highly successful 3-day telethon had raised some R50,000 in cash and pledges for this community station which reaches from Randfontein and Carletonville to Roodepoort and Westgate.
“People give freely because of what we are doing for the community,” says
Theron. “Not just Afrikaans listeners, but also English and some blacks phoned in, and they thanked us for giving community issues exposure, offering advice (for example on toothache), and prayers.” The station takes a strongly Christian line, always refusing advertising for alcohol as well as now-banned tobacco ads or sponsorships.
Radio West Rand draws 80 percent of its R50,000 a month budget from advertising, most it drawn from local retailers, and it believes that listenership is in the region of 30,000 though the AMPS figures show only 13000 due, Theron believes, to a restricted method of collecting data. “As for saying we don’t appeal to youth, well, young people get older and we are confident they will listen in,” adds Theron.
The dialogue between public and private discourses can be easily observed on the airwaves but not necessarily understood. Nuanced expressions indicate, for instance, that what was once “our church” is now “the church” referring to a change of heart in the Dutch Reformed movement which has now endorsed integration of once racially separate congregations.
But it remains the case that the term Afrikaner has not yet been accepted in the world at large as a tag for all Afrikaans speakers regardless of race. Afrikaans political, religious and cultural figures have a hard time overcoming the legacy of white domination that the SABC so publicly presented to the world.
A new public face of mixed racial, but common ethnic, identity is emerging. But it will take many long, private reflections aided by the intimate voice of radio reaching all the communities of Afrikaners to bring on the epiphany that says real attitudinal change has at last come to pass.
Apartheid’s legacy
Described as the last bastion of apartheid, Radio Pretoria broadcasts locally on FM (104.2), but is also available nationwide by satellite. It has an efficient website that lists its associate stations across South Africa, spreading belief in racial pride and separatism.
In 2001, ICASA refused to renew its license because of its policy of refusing to hire blacks, which is unconstitutional. The matter went to court, but in a settlement a temporary 12-month licence was granted to Radio Pretoria which has remained on air. In March-April 2003 it will be up for hearings as ICASA reviews the licences of community radio stations.
A spokesman for the communications authority refused to comment on Radio Pretorias chances of renewing its licence.The station has been variously described as the font of hate speech in South Africa and the saviour of the ware (true) Afrikaners. Its content has at times included such choice programmes as the Sunday phone-in Kroeshare en Lelike Neuse (crinkly hair and ugly noses) hosted by Willie Vokkem Fourie.
In its submission to the Human Rights Commission hearings on racism and the media a year ago, ICASA said it was aware that Radio Pretoria had come up for a lot of discussion at the hearings, but since it was involved in legal proceedings it could not comment.