Nation’s watercooler — radio in South Africa is still a reliable measure of our country’s pulse

If there is a public forum where South Africans are not atomised and can find and hear each other, it is good old radio, which is thriving 101 years after the first transmission from Johannesburg in 1923.

With dozens of social media platforms competing for the attention of news junkies, radio remains the most universal mass medium for national conversation in this country. And this includes millions of young people.

Tanja Bosch, associate professor of media studies and production at the University of Cape Town, wrote in 2022 that radio listenership in South Africa was consistently higher than the global average.

So too was station podcast listenership, evidence that “radio listening provides background texture to everyday life”. It is, Bosch added, an activity “which reminds people there is a social world out there”.

Indeed, radio is the watercooler for the nation and a measure of its intellectual, emotional and democratic pulse. In our country’s middle-aged democracy, no other medium has the capacity to attract such a diverse and multilingual audience with immediate access to its hosts and guests.

Radio in South Africa gobbles up all other media.

Many rivers crossed

The SABC has battered its way through many turbulent rapids – the Broederbond years, the early optimistic changes and the wrecking ball of organic CEO Hlaudi Motsoeneng.

Attempts to contort it into a state broadcaster and propaganda machine for the governing ANC dealt body blows, but the corporation is still standing.

So crafty is the format of radio and so swift and extensive its reach that it has successfully leveraged modern technology beyond the solid-state, battery-operated portable radio so that it can stream on new platforms as well as “the airwaves”.

The SABC might still not have sorted out its financial model, but public broadcasting is today a vibrant and vital lifeline for democracy and freedom of speech. That is why it has attracted some of the brightest hosts with agile minds and compassionate hearts big enough to hold this rowdy, pugnacious nation in dialogue.

If you only listened to the radio, spoke and understood English or Afrikaans and relied on the public broadcaster for news, analysis and commentary in the lead-up to South Africa’s watershed 2024 national elections, you would have been well served.

As our hefty GNU was birthed, the dial of the old National Panasonic FM solid-state battery-operated radio in my office alternated between two SABC channels: Radio Sonder Grense (RSG) and SAfm.

National treasures

Just as I was about to mention him as a national treasure, news broke that colleague and SAfm Sunrise anchor Stephen Grootes was leaving the public broadcaster and shifting into Bruce Whitfield’s slot at 702. He will be missed.

Grootes, along with fellow presenters Cathy Mohlalana, Sakhina Kamwendo, Michelle Constant, Oliver Dickson, Kgomotso Moeketsi and others (there is not a dud on the station), all brought nuance, textured debate and sense to conversations. In fact, we have learnt how to talk to each other guided by these veterans.

And while the experts and the pundits were ­offering opinions, ordinary South Africans from across the country were calling in  and, if you listened carefully, it had been clear for months that a massive political change was on the cards.

The public broadcaster has 19 stations, with Ukhozi FM wiping the floor with all the others. SAfm is the oldest station.

And of course it is an English-language station. As Bosch notes, “despite the range of vernacular options, English stations are perceived as being sites of the public sphere and attract debate and conversation between a diverse range of South Africans”.

Bosch found that, regardless of language, talk radio shows “are booming with vibrant conversations highlighting the important role of radio as a space to bring together geographically diverse South Africans to debate matters of social and political importance”.

Debates and discussions on RSG, too, reflect  a wide range of ideological viewpoints, with hosts, guests and callers intelligently crunching a possible future.

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Listeners of this station are in fact so engaged that in 2022 they demonstrated their displeasure with the new format of a morning show and its flippant approach, so much so that it was canned.

“Hulle soek nie spookasem en springmielies nie (they don’t want candyfloss and popcorn),” said then station manager Louise Jooste.

With hosts including investigative journalist Suzanne Paxton, agricultural journalists Lise Roberts and Eloise Pretorius, sports presenter Jody Hendricks, lifestyle editors Martelize Brink, Willem Pelser, Frazer Barry, Shahieda Carlie, Haidee Muller-Isaacs, Renske Jacobs and others, RSG covers wide terrain.

Bosch reminds us that radio is “no longer a one-­dimensional platform or ‘blind medium’, and this is a key contributing factor to its growth”.

The diverse and vibrant range of stations is a unique feature of the South African radio landscape and one we should support and treasure. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.