All the hits and more: Transkei’s Capital Radio and non-segregationist playlisting

Abstract

In the 1960s the South African government institutionalised apartheid of the airwaves, implementing separate radio stations in line with its policy of ‘cultural purity’ whereby each ethnic group’s culture was to be treated separately. Music played on government radio was streamlined according to what the government’s South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) deemed appropriate for each ethnic group. Furthermore, there was strict censorship, ruling out controversial lyrical messages. The SABC’s popular music station – Radio 5 – broadcast in English and Afrikaans with a white audience in mind and played middle-of-the-road western pop music. The apartheid government also created separate ‘independent’ homelands for each black ethnic group, and in one of these homelands – the Transkei – an independent radio station named Capital Radio was set up in 1979. Its slogan was ‘All the hits and more’ and, unlike the SABC stations, it did not practise severe censorship or segregation of musical styles according to different race groups. This paper incorporates the memories of Capital Radio’s management, DJs, and listeners in providing an analysis of the way Capital Radio’s broad, relatively eclectic and inclusive music playlisting not only contested apartheid airwaves but attracted listeners of different backgrounds, exposing them to a diversity of musical styles and influences with which they began to identify.