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A Story of Radio RSA (7): “A Process of Integration”

Previous blog:
A Story of Radio RSA (6), June 8, 2025

Adapting the Message

By the late 1970s, while still an apartheid state, South Africa wasn’t the same as it had been in the 1960s – and it had taken ways neither Hendrik Verwoerd nor Albert Hertzog would have approved of. In 1977, Stellenbosch University opened its doors for a few black students, provided that there were no stages for further education available for them at non-white universities, according to German news magazine “Der Spiegel” at the time. At the same time, some relaxation in racial segregation probably made the rules even more elaborate, like joint inter-racial sports teams were OK, black-and-white staying at the same “international hotels” and having meals there at the same tables was legal, but dancing together or swimming in the same pool was as forbidden as ever. Racial segregation had been formalized and made universal in South Africa in 1953. In 1971, one hotel become multi-racial on an experimental basis, a number of "international hotels" followed, and the end for "whites-only" hotels came in 1986.

A quote from then foreign minister Roelof Botha probably helps to summarize the late-70s status: "I’m prepared to go to war over our right to exist, but I’m not prepared to die for signs in a lift."

Strikes, although illegal according to the apartheid script, had been a way for the black working South African majority to make its power felt to the white rulers, and quotes from ruling Boers, passed down from the 1960s, showed that this power was really feared. The boom years had ended in the 1970s, and at the same time, skilled or half-skilled labor came into high demand. 1973 saw an accelerated emergence of new unions and growing union membership, and although the government did its best to neutralize their attractiveness to the black workforce, it also recognized labor unions, for the first time under apartheid, in 1979. Probably to the chagrin of the government however, the black unions were much more politically aware than expected. And obviously, they were very aware that South Africa was a welfare state for white, but not for black workers.

The ANC thought of itself as a people’s movement and army. That may have been so, but it was probably more radical in its demands, including its call for international economic sanctions, than the general South African population – blacks included. Not only the white minority was divided during its rule, but so was the "black majority", plus Coloreds, Indians, yes, Chinese, too (though not so many after 1910.

I’m not familiar with the programs of the ANC’s Radio Freedom that broadcast from Tanzania, and later from Zambia, but a radio drama on one of the recordings of the ANC’s Radio Freedom that is available on Youtube takes divisions between black South Africans into account – divisions even within families. And while much of the programs may have been rather "foreign" to Radio RSA’s European listeners (and hard to relate to, especially the obligatory machine-gun fire at the opening of each program), there is an element of progressiveness in the radio drama that follows here: the preparedness of a man’s daughters and wife to address Daddy’s erroneous views on the 1984 elections to a tricameral parliament, – right into his face. That was probably in line with the same values that would be expressed in any progressive household in Europe or North America, or in Wembley (on certain days).

The Boer propaganda was elaborate, but it was out of tune with "the trend that normally will triumph because it agrees with the great myths of the time, common to all men".1

So Radio RSA took on some new stories. Rather than praising purported "harmony and peace" between South Africa’s "ethnic groups and races", they now emphasized that "a process of integration" was underway and that the need for skilled labor had "already led to integration at the workplace." The program added that "sanctions would interfere with exactly this process of healthy evolution"2.

Besides content, the station’s technology park had also seen changes. From 1966 to 1979, Chris Greenway counted the installation of seventeen transmitters at Meyerton, seven of which were dedicated exclusively Radio-RSA – the four 250-kW transmitters as had been known since the beginnings in 1966/67, plus three 500-kW transmitters, added "in the late 1970s"3.

The Usual Suspects

Radio RSA continued to discount the ANC as a mere "terrorist organization", alleging that the ANC wouldn’t even be illegal if it wasn’t "responsible for bomb attacks, sabotage, or murder"4.
Which was rich, when you look at the time table of apartheid legislation through the 1950s and 1960s. It didn’t take much to be illegal in South Africa.

My hometown wasn’t full of shortwave listeners and DXers. Nobody in my school class shared my radio hobby. In that light alone, Radio RSA couldn’t have been a game changer, even if its message had been whole-heartedly bought by every listener.
But although shortwave wasn’t a universal medium, "Sender und Frequenzen", a German version of the WRTH (but no relation), reportedly had 40,000 users5.

Neither TV nor radio made me aware of what was missing in Radio RSA’s presentation of South Africa. As far as I was concerned, the realities presented on South African shortwaves and on German and Dutch VHFs contradicted each other, but they co-existed without demanding judgment.

Two books carried the weight to broaden my horizon.

Can Themba wasn’t well-known even among bibliophiles in my hometown, but an anthology of political essays and prose excerpts had just been published in Hamburg6, almost at the same time I happened on Radio RSA. The collection of articles and short stories included "Crepuscule", published in 1972. It told a few days in the life of a black Sophiatown resident in the 1950s, legally in love with Brandy, and illegally with a white girl ("chocolate on cream").

The story didn’t exactly get me at the time, but it did point out realities to me that weren’t there in Radio RSA’s German programs. There, it was Afrikaans language, Afrikaans poetry, and Afrikaans what-have-you when it wasn’t Our Wildlife Heritage. It helped that the edition of Themba’s story7 that I read was a German translation. That’s how that non-white parallel universe of Radio RSA’s, South Africa’s "crepuscule" world, became visible for me.

Another reality, never mentioned by Radio RSA either, was torture in South Africa. James Michener’s "The Covenant", also in a German translation, informed me. And "Der Spiegel", again from Hamburg, noted that 21 non-white prisoners in South Africa had died, frequently in mysterious ways", within about just twenty months8. Radio RSA did bring up necklacing however – the other guys’ kind of torture and murder.

Themba’s stories also shed light on divisions within racial groups – divisions that were big enough for the Sophiatown first-person narrator to crack jokes about "African nationalists who profess horror at the thought that any self-respecting black man could desire any white woman," and bridges wide enough for a cop to let the narrator emerge from his Johannesburg subway arrival station without passport control because it’s "the one who drank with me Sis Julia’s shebeen on an afternoon off." In short, there was disagreement within the privileged white class and within the oppressed majority respectively, enough to enable a lot of illegal action or nonfeasance.

As far as international radio was concerned, just as there was Radio RSA, always on message with up to 500 kW, there was the ANC’s Radio Freedom, always on message with maybe 50 kW. That was one reason why you wouldn’t usually catch Radio Freedom’s shortwave signals in Europe. Another was that South Africa’s authorities reportedly jammed Radio Freedom’s transmissions. And, of course, the ANC’s target area was always south of Zambia and other "frontline states" that helped Radio Freedom out with airtime on their shortwave stations – the opposite direction of Europe or North America. Radio RSA’s signals always went north, and were carefully targeted at African and Western countries and regions.

Even 50 kWs of ANC radio were too much for Pretoria though. Any listener in South Africa who listened to it could face up to eight years imprisonment, if caught.

How did Radio RSA handle the parallel universe, in that "crepuscule"? At times by demonization, and mostly by omission. There was a series about the Zulus in the late 1980s, but it was about Zulu history, with King Shaka at the center, not about modern, let alone urban, life.

Listener’s Questions

Listeners’ questions didn’t always get answers either: Ake Magnusson, author of an academic booklet about Radio RSA in 1976, wrote that

The foremost programme for listenersis called ‘P.O. Box 4559’. In this so called Mailbag programme it was announced on February 5, 1974: ‘Mr. Ake Magnusson of the Institute of Political Science at Göteborg’s University. We have written to you, giving the details you wanted on Radio RSA.’ Along with a rather stencilled description of a technical nature of the Voice of South Africa, this was the station’s answer to a letter from me concerning four vital questions about the South African shortwave station. Another letter from me has not led to any reactions at all. This example, though it may be a unique case, shows how the letters from listeners are sometimes used in dubious ways.9

To be fair, I’m pretty sure that no shortwave broadcasters at the time answered every question they were asked – nor would they nowadays. But of course, Magnusson’s experience wasn’t unique. When Radio RSA had a news bulletin about a group of French parliamentarians who had concluded their visit to South Africa with a lot of – reportedly – complaisant findings, the newsreader made no mention of the delegation’s party affiliations. In the most unfavorable case, that could have meant a complete National-Rally traveling group, and as there was no internet to answer my question, I turned to P.O. Box 4559’s German edition. Rather than answering my question, the mailbag program simply repeated the original message from its earlier news bulletin:

The deputies declared on a concluding press conference that after their visit, they are of the view that Apartheid had been abolished, and that they also heard in talks with the numerous political groups and population groups that South Africans, with an overwhelming majority, opposed sanctions. Indeed, the parliamentarians noted that there is a problem of rural flight in South Africa,that there are mixed-races residential areas, that the vexed passport legislation that had led to a discriminating cuts into free movement of persons, have been abolished, that the blacks’ standard of living has risen this much, in contrast to rises in the white population’s real incomes, for example, that the question of residence must, logically, beyond the [group areas act] develop into a further process of integration.10

So I sent another letter and repeated my question.

Answer:

We endeavor to give a balanced view of South Africa, and in the cases we remember, when we rendered statements from foreign politicians, their party affiliations were also mentioned as a matter of principle. If that didn’t happen, it was an unintended oversight we would like to apologize for. However, there are German or rather German-speaking politicians who only come here to confirm preconceived views to shine with on TV at home later on. As these views existed before these Gentlemen came to South Africa We don’t consider such statements productive when it is about our mission to raise understanding for the situation of this country.11

I’ll never know who those visiting guys from France were, back in 1986.

Radio Freedom seems to have had some success among younger listeners in South Africa, despite the threat of jailtime, and despite reported South African jamming. One important reason was probably the music they played – music that was frequently banned in South Africa. One of the best-known names among the bands and musicians could be “Dollar Brand”, aka Abdullah Ibrahim, a jazz musician.

Whatever the South African radio landscape looked like, it wasn’t everyone’s stuff, not even among whites. "Lourenco Marques Radio" (LM Radio) from Mozambique wasn’t an opposition broadcaster, but a private station with a lot of the kind of music younger South Africans wanted to listen to, and that wasn’t greatly available on SABC programs. Although medium- and shortwave-based, LM Radio seems to have been a real alternative – until it "lost much of its sparkle", when taken over by the SABC in 1972.

I’m not sure how much Radio RSA really stood out within the South African radio landscape. Above all, its target area, in terms of content and target areas, wasn’t South African. But while the SABC, the domestic service, wasn’t necessarily popular among all segments of their audience, Radio RSA seems to have ruled among international shortwave listeners of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. They regularly were among the top-three stations in the German SWL club’s ADDX (Assoziation Deutschsprachiger DXer) popularity polls, often along with the BBC’s and Radio Canada International’s German services, and they were probably liked both for their ways of presentation that came across as rather spontaneous, and for showing appreciation for their listeners. Appreciation manifested itself in effusive praise for listeners’ fidelity, and in unusually refined letter paper, for example, and, according to Peter Orlik during the first years of Radio RSA’s life cycle, the station’s mailbag program P.O. Box 4559 reacted to listener feedback in a respectable manner:

The letters come from all over the world including some of the nations of Black Africa and deal with facts about South Africa as a whole as well as its music and personalities. Little attempt is made to hide the fact that some of these letters are critical of the Republic and its policies. Many of these are rebutted over the air and it is RSA’s hope that "the facts we have given in reply have led to a better understanding of our position: to know is to understand. We believe that most of the misconceptions about South Africa are the result of misunderstanding and misinformation. The task of RSA is clear." (RSA CAlling, No. 1 /1968, p. 1)
It is to the credit of the program that these replies are entertainingly presented with never the slightest hint of ill-feeling.12

I don’t know if that remained so until the end. As far as Radio RSA’s German service was concerned, some of their staff sometimes reacted rather accusingly to criticism from the audience. But that probably didn’t hurt in terms of acceptance in the German-speaking target areas. While shortwave doesn’t provide media with market segmentation tools as powerful as the internet, at least the smaller languages – like Dutch, German, and (for a few years) Danish – provided some opportunities to do so after all. In English or French, only the way Radio RSA directed and slewed its antennas would be of some help.
________________

Notes

1 Jacques Ellul: Propaganda, New York, 1965, p. 42 2 Radio RSA, German Service, P. O. Box 4559, October 22, 19873 Donald R. Browne: International Radio Broadcasting, New York, 1982, page 2064 Radio RSA, German Service, P.O. Box 4559, October 10, 19865 ADDX-Kurier, Sept 15, 19906 Das Rowohlt aktuell Lesebuch, Reinbek, 1983, 1984, pages 179 to 1897 An audio book of "Crepuscule" can be found here. 8 “Kopf gegen die Wand”, Der Spiegel, December 11, 19779 Ake Magnusson, The Voice of South Africa, Uppsala, 1976, page 5010 Radio RSA, German Service, P. O. Box 4559, October 22, 1987 – same as quoted under FN-2. I’m not sure if the Group Areas Act is what the mailbag program referred to at the time, but I suppose so. In German, Radio RSA said "Gruppenwohnraumvorbehaltsgesetz", and they pointed out that South Africa’s need for skilled labor had already led to "integration at the workplace". Their original answer in German:

Die Abgeordneten erklärten auf einer abschließenden Pressekonferenz, dass sie nach ihrem Besuch die Auffassung vertreten, dass die Apartheid abgeschafft worden sei, und sie außerdem im Zuge der Gespräche mit Vertetern der zahlreichen politischen Gruppierungen und Bevölkerungsgruppen vernommen haben, dass man sich in S.A. in der überwältigenden Mehrheit gegen Sanktionen ausgesprochen habe. In der Tat haben die Parlamentarier festgestellt, daß esin S.A. ein Problem der Landflucht gibt, daß es in S.A. gemischtrassige Wohngebiete gibt, daß die leidlichen Paßgesetze, die zu einer diskriminierenden Einschneidung der Freizügigkeit in der Bewegung geführt hatten, abgeschafft worden sind, daß der Lebensstandard der Schwarzen derart gestiegen ist, im Gegensatz zur Steigerung z. B. des Realeinkommens der weissen Bevölkerung, daß sich die Frage des Wohnsitzes über das Gruppenwohnraumvorbehaltsgesetz hinaus in der Zukunft als logische Konsequenz zu einem weiteren Integrationsprozess entwickeln muß. Der Bedarf an Fachkräften durch die südafrikansiche Wirtschaft hat ja letztendlich schon einmal zur Integration am Arbeitsplatz geführt, zu einer gezielten Kampagne um die Schuausbildung der schwarzen Bevölkerung auf den gleichen Stand mit der weissen Bevölkerung zu bringen …

You get the picture.)

11 P.O. Box 4559, Radio RSA German Service, November 5, 1988:

Wir bemühen uns zwar, ein ausgewogenes Bild Südafrikas zu zeichnen und in den uns erinnerlichen Fällen, bei denen wir in unseren Nachrichtebsendungen Aeusserungen ausländischer Politiker wiedergaben, wurde aus Prinzip auch die Parteizugehörigkeit solcher Politiker genannt. Wenn dies nicht geschah, so ist das ein Versehen, das bestimmt nicht beabsichtigt war, und für das wir uns gern entschuldigen wollen. Es gibt jedoch deutsche oder sagen wir besser deutsch-sprechende Politiker, die hier her kommnen, nur um eine vorgefasste Meinung zu bestätigen, mitder sie dann späterim Fernsehen in ihrer Heimat brillieren. Solche Aeusserungen halten wir für wenig produktiv, wenn es um unseren Auftrag geht, Verständnis für die Lage dieses Landes zu wecken. Da die dort geäußerten Meinungen und Ansichten längst bestanden, bevor diese Herren nach Südafrika kamen, sehen wir sie auch kaum als berichtenswerte Neuigkeit. […]

12 Peter Orlik, The South African Broadcasting Corporation, page 186

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