ON MONDAY, radio in South Africa turned 100. It certainly is cause for much celebration.
The first broadcast, on December 18, 1923, was heard in Johannesburg. Stations were established in Cape Town and Durban the following year. Nobody, during the humble times for radio, ever imagined the power and beauty it would command over the next century.
It was dubbed the “wireless”, and the government of the day, through various agencies, took charge of all three stations. After a few years, entrepreneur IW Schlesinger purchased them and ran the services into the 1930s until his application for renewal was refused.
The Broadcasting Act, which gave rise to the SABC, came into being in 1936. The initial language of broadcast was English (several programmes were imported from overseas) and
