By Mark Ogagan
Thursday the 17th of July, 2025 marks the 75th year since the existence of the South African Broadcasting Corporation, (SABC) News Service.
It was on July 17, 1950, when the SABC News aired its first radio news bulletin from the broadcast house on Commissioner Street, Johannesburg.
South Africa did not have a television service until 1976, seventeen years after Africa’s first television station went on air in Ibadan, Western Nigeria.
Two years later, the news bulletins were extended to include regional bulletins, followed by a rediffusion service relaying African language broadcasts into metropolitan areas and townships.
The news service has evolved since then, with SABC News, through its TV bulletins, digital streaming and radio platforms, continuing to position itself as the leader in providing Independent and impartial news on the African continent and beyond.
Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) Director William Bird says SABC was known as part of the state and propaganda arm of the Nationalist Party government.
Bird says, “Even before then if you go back television was resisted by then Nationalist Party because they saw it as this thing that will bring in evil, vesuvius values, it was going to assist in Satanism been spread throughout the land and people getting all sorts of wild and liberation ideas and communist coming, and taking over.”
“That’s when they started to see that actually this could be an incredibly powerful tool to help keep these black people who kept demanding rights, and it was a useful tool for them to exercise very draconian and revolting forms of power. It was common for SABC to accompany SAPS when they were looking for ANC cooperatives, and they would burst in and go into their house with TV cameras, then…but definitely we are in a better place today than we were then,” he adds.(www.amatropics.com)
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