Resistant Medium: The Voices of Zulu Radio Drama in the 1970s

Abstract

The making of culture in South Africa through different but linked forms and genres focuses on the medium of radio, and the ‘emergent genre’ of Zulu serial radio drama. Using Benedict Anderson's notion of ‘socioscape’ a link is drawn between the wide sweep of historical events and the production of culture. Beginning with the case of the musical, uMabatha [Macbeth], its performance history, and its links with serial radio drama in Zulu, this article focuses on the ways in which this, in turn was linked to the ‘performance’ of African football commentary on radio, and points to the national resonances that the act, and art, of commentating built up for both announcers and listeners. Finally, three representative radio serial plays from the 1970s are examined in relation to the ways in which they engaged with the social and political realities of the time. Through the multi-accentual nature of language and the polysemic nature of the plays themselves these plays might appear to endorse or, at least, acquiesce in the dominant apartheid ideology of the era, yet at the same time they offered resistant alternatives to it.

‘Sikhuluma Isikhethu’ : Ndebele Radio, Ethnicity and Cultural Identity in South Africa, 1983-1994

“…In recent years this medium has begun to receive some serious scholarly analysis from media studies scholars, anthropologists as well as from historians (Gunner, Ligaga & Moyo 2011;Fardon & Furniss 2000). A number of studies in South Africa have explored public radio and African language radio in particular (Gunner 2000(Gunner , 2002(Gunner , 2004(Gunner , 2005(Gunner , 2006Lekgoathi 2009Lekgoathi , 2011Lekgoathi , 2012Gqibitole 2002;Mhlambi 2009;Theunissen, Nikitin & Pillay 1996) and even fewer have focused on the use of radio by the liberation movements in Africa (Lekgoathi 2010(Lekgoathi , 2013Davis 2009;Mosia, Riddle & Zaffiro 1994). Except for Lekgoathi's (2012) article, no scholarly work has been produced on Ndebele radio.…”