Television in South Africa was introduced in 1976. The country is notable for its late adoption of widespread television broadcasting. Although closed-circuit experiments took place in exhibits in 1929 and 1936, upon South Africa's adoption of apartheid in the mid-1940s, television was seen with massive skepticism from the ruling government, a position that lasted for nearly thirty years. During the early years of television, it was heavily regulated among ethnic lines, with whites receiving the only channel at launch, while blacks received their own channel at the end of 1981. Commercial television emerged in 1986 in the form of a subscription channel, though the SABC decided to counteract in advance with the launch of a supplementary white service on the frequencies of the black network after 9pm.
Post-apartheid, the television sector began to liberalise and several minor languages, such as Ndebele, made their first appearances on national television. The free-to-air monopoly was broken in 1998 when e.tv, the first free-to-air private television channel, opened. Currently (as of early 2026), South Africa is nearing the end of the shutdown of analogue terrestrial signals, the process of which was delayed several times and taken to court.
History Early developments On 7 September 1928, The Star reported on the arrival of the first television experiments in South Africa, with the participation of John Logie Baird, who was negotiating an arrangement with the Schlesinger organisation to market sets. The service would start in Johannesburg by the end of the year and would subsequently expand to other South African cities over time. The first demonstration took place on 22 August 1929, being limited to members of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science (SAAAS) at the engineering laboratory of the South African College in Cape Town. Initial pictures were of poor quality and plagued by interference. A second test was conducted at the Empire Exhibition in Johannesburg in 1936. These initial experiments were seen with skepticism, with the 1936 demonstration showing concerns that television could be used for voyeurism.
The 1929 exhibition was marked by several other goals which were pivotal for the usage of television in South Africa: in addition to the participation of theatre personality Gwyneth Nelson Keys,E. Rosenthal, You Have Been Listening, p.138. The Sunday Times reported that it could also be used for broadcasting pictures of wanted criminals to police stations across the country. Airing of current events would put it in competition with the bioscope (movie theatres), which was the leading form of visual media at the time. There wasn't sufficient funding, as the three radio stations of the time were facing financial difficulties.E. Rosenthal, You Have Been Listening, p.140.
The arrival of the television equipment from London for the 1936 Empire Exhibition was delayed due to logistical problems regarding its shipment, which only arrived by 22 September, a week after its opening. The first image seen in the second tests was of a laughing girl, which the Rand Daily Mail incorrectly thought to be the first picture seen on television in South Africa, disregarding the 1929 experiments. The demonstration was held in private to a number of guests, among them representatives of the Reuters news agency. Viewers came to be televised at the exhibition; by the end of the year, 25,000 people appeared on screen as part of the experiments. F. R. Milsom foresaw the use of television to deliver news as it happened, in opposition to newspapers where the news came delayed, at the time of printing.
Despite the success of the second exhibition, the view the press had of television differed: it would not lead to an immediate launch of a television network in South Africa, and that such a service would take a long time to set up, largely due to cost issues, as well as the only possible company that set it up would be a wealthy company. The Rand Daily Mail suggested a long wait for a regular service. British firms held a demonstration of television in Johannesburg in April 1950, but it was exected that a television network would not arrive to South Africa for "several years".
Opposition to introduction Opposition leader K. Ueckermann was the first politician to propose a television service for the SABC, submitting a question to the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, J. F. Naudé, on 6 April 1951.K. Tomaselli, The Cinema of Apartheid. Race and Class in South African Film, pp.14-15, 145. The SABC had set goals for television as early as 1944, as one of its goals after the war ended.SABC, Annual Report, 1944, p.6.
The broadcaster later reiterated that introducing a television service was considered too costly, especially given the early global developments in television technology, whose impact was still being studied. In 1952, Naudé stated that South Africa was interested in developing its own television service in the future. However, at the time, the costs were still seen as prohibitive for the Government of South Africa.Union of South Africa, Hansard 78, 1952-05-09, col. 5539.
The SABC, for its part, maintained that it was unlikely South Africa would have a television service in the near future due to the high costs associated with installing equipment, importing television sets, and producing local programmes.Union of South Africa, Hansard 83, 1953-09-11, col. 3334; Union of South Africa, Hansard 85, 1954-05-11, col. 4983.
The first proposal to introduce television in South Africa was made by The Rank Organisation in 1953, but it was rejected by the governing National Party. Even though the state-controlled South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) held a virtual monopoly on radio broadcasting, it viewed the new medium as a threat to Afrikaans and the Afrikaner volk, fearing it would give undue prominence to English and create unfair competition for the Afrikaans press.
Moreover, as the 1950s progressed, the SABC faced increasing financial difficulties. Its budget was strained by the purchase of additional land for its Auckland Park facilities, the expansion of Bantu radio services, and loans to install FM transmitters and services. These financial constraints hindered the SABC’s ambitions.G. Hayman & R. Tomaselli, Ideology and Technology in the Growth of South African Broadcasting, 1924-1971, in R. Tomaselli et al. (eds), Currents of Power: State Broadcasting in South Africa, pp.60-61.
By the late-1950s, United Party member B. Wilson had argued that the idea of introducing television was no longer an "astronomical" expense.Union of South Africa, Hansard 101, 1959-06-01, col. 7059. However, throughout the 1960s, the National Party maintained that the benefits of television did not justify its high operational costs.Union of South Africa, Hansard 107, 1961-03-24, cols. 3649-3650. Advertising, however, was to be limited to big companies, due to high costs. This would spell a large downfall for the print industry, which would mean a mass exodus for advertisers, causing the shutdown of newspapers.Union of South Africa, Hansard 107, 1961-03-24, col. 3664.
Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd compared television to atomic bombs and poison gas, stating, "They are modern things, but that does not mean they are desirable. The government has to watch for any dangers to the people, both spiritual and physical."
Dr. Albert Hertzog, the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs at the time, argued that "the effect of wrong pictures on children, the less developed, and other races can be destructive." Declaring that television would come to South Africa "over [his] dead body," Hertzog denounced it as "only a miniature bioscope which is being carried into the house and over which parents have no control."Cosmopolitan, Volume 152, 1962, page 49
He also claimed that "South Africa would have to import films showing race mixing, and advertising would make Africans dissatisfied with their lot."Australia's Neighbors, 1967, page 8
On the other hand, the South African government had been producing filmed content for television broadcasters as far ahead as the late-1950s. The Department of Information's Television Section produced more than 200 films, which were sent to television stations in the United States, Canada, Australia, West Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Finland, Switzerland, Sweden, Rhodesia, France, and the United Kingdom between 1958-63.
These films featured news, interviews, and documentary segments and were viewed by millions of people, with production costs amounting to thousands of rand. While the opposition did not object to the films in principle, they questioned the government's stance on television.RSA, Hansard 8, 1963-06-14, cols. 7884-7891; RSA, Hansard 22, 1968-03-05, col. 1619; RSA, Hansard 23, 1968-04-26, cols. 4149-4150.
However, many White South Africans, including some Afrikaners, did not share Hertzog's hostility towards what he called "the little black box." When Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the Moon in 1969, South Africa was one of the few countries unable to watch the event broadcast live. This led one newspaper to remark, "The moon film has proved to be the last straw… The situation is becoming a source of embarrassment for the country."The Sunday Times, 7 July 1969, quoted by Bernard Cros in
In response to public demand, the government arranged limited viewings of the landing, allowing people to watch recorded footage for fifteen minutes.
The opposition United Party highlighted that even less economically developed countries in Africa had already introduced television.
In addition, neighbouring Southern Rhodesia had launched its own television service in 1960, becoming the first country in Africa south of the equator to do so.EBU Review: Programmes, Administration, Law, Volume 71, Administrative Office of the European Broadcasting Union, 1962, page 12 Known as Rhodesia Television (RTV), its major shareholders included South African companies, such as the Argus Group of newspapers through its subsidiary, the Rhodesian Printing and Publishing Company,Area Handbook for Zambia, Volume 550, Issue 75, Irving Kaplan, American University (Washington, D.C.). Foreign Area Studies U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969, page 255 as well as Davenport and Meyer,Viewing the Foreign and the Local in Zimbabwe: Film, Television, and the Shona Viewers, Katrina Daly Thompson University of Wisconsin--Madison, 2004, page 125 which also operated LM Radio, based in Mozambique, then under Portuguese rule.Who's who of Southern Africa, Volume 54, Ken Donaldson (Pty.) Limited, 1967, page 393
Commenting on Rhodesia's experience with television, Ivor Benson, who served as Director of the Government Information Department under Ian Smith, remarked that the South African government "had been wise to stand firm against a great deal of well-organised pressure and to insist on waiting until some means might be found of separating television from some of the evils which have attended it in other countries."The Opinion Makers, Ivor Benson, Dolphin Press, 1967, page 135
In the absence of television in South Africa, a radio adaptation of the British television series The Avengers was produced by Sonovision for the SABC's commercial network, Springbok Radio, in 1972. Although it ran for only 18 months, the series proved highly popular.
In 1968, the government's opposition to the introduction of television began to soften after Hertzog was removed as Minister for Posts and Telegraphs by Prime Minister John Vorster.The super-Afrikaners, Ivor Wilkins, Hans Strydom Jonathan Ball, 1980, page 273