SABC’S 90 YEARS OF PAIN AND HORROR - THE UNPALATABLE TRUTH...

We Will Not Sing Kumbaya: Remembering 90 Years of the SABC — Truth Before Celebration

Fellow South Africans,

As the state and the SABC celebrate 90 years since the corporation’s creation on 1 August 1936, I write to insist: commemoration must begin with truth. Broadcasting in this country was not neutral. For decades the airwaves were structured to exclude, marginalise and instrumentalise the majority of our people. African languages, music, culture and representation were sidelined or framed through colonial and apartheid lenses. That history must be named plainly before we clap one another on the back and sing together.

The harm was concrete: denied representation; news and culture shaped to justify repression; creative labour appropriated, censored or suppressed; generations taught to value themselves by other people’s standards. The SABC’s reach made it an engine of exclusion and propaganda, and the social and cultural consequences are visible in South Africa today. Any honest memorial must acknowledge that fact.

One of the most painful pieces of this history concerns the post‑1994 treatment of homeland broadcasters — and in particular the fate of the Bophuthatswana Broadcasting Corporation (Bop). While many former‑homeland services were audited and folded into national broadcasting structures under legislative processes, Bop’s story was different and deeply damaging. Bop’s services were effectively dismantled rather than properly incorporated; funding was cut, staff lost livelihoods and stability, families were impoverished, some individuals suffered ill‑health and even death as a result of the stress and trauma. Attempts to recover and preserve Bop’s archives were frustrated by resistance and delay. That pain is not an abstract footnote: it is the lived history of workers and communities whose labour and cultural contribution were erased by administrative and political decisions.

Because this legacy matters to me personally and to our collective memory, I acted. Radio Bop was first resurrected in 2014; in 2023 AGT Media Group acquired Radio Bop. As Founder and Executive Chairman of AGT Media Group, I then resolved to restore the full legacy of the Bophuthatswana Broadcasting Corporation. I legally incorporated all five radio stations that once formed part of Bop, and placed Bop Broadcasting Corporation — with its three radio stations and two television channels — as member companies and subsidiaries of our holding company AGT Media Group.

Today two stations are live again, rebranded as Radio Bop Africa (https://iono.fm/s/479) and Radio Mmabatho Africa (https://iono.fm/s/480). Plans are advancing to revive Radio Sunshine as Radio Sunshine Africa, to launch a new talk platform called Authentic Voice of Africa, and to establish sister TV channels Sunshine TV Africa and Authentic TV of Africa. We have also launched a newspaper, tuNEWS (tuNEWS Publication), in which this open letter appears. I did this to preserve a broadcasting legacy that must not be allowed to perish the way some decisions sought to make it perish.

This resurrection is an act of restitution and remembrance: it restores voices, restores jobs and restores a cultural archive that our people deserve.

Celebration without recognition is complicity. Therefore I demand a commemoration that is sober, accountable and reparative. Specifically:

- A full, public acknowledgement by the SABC of its historical role as an instrument of colonial and apartheid information control, including the exclusion and marginalisation of indigenous languages, music and cultural representation.

- A permanent, well‑resourced national archive and educational programme — accessible in all official languages — that documents the SABC’s history and the histories of former‑homeland broadcasters (including Bop), and makes those records available to communities, researchers and the public.

- Immediate cooperation from the SABC and government to locate, preserve and hand over archives relating to the Bophuthatswana Broadcasting Corporation and other homeland services so that the cultural record can be restored.

- A focused, independent inquiry into the decisions and processes of the 1990s that led to the closure, dismantling or unequal treatment of former‑state broadcasters, with transparent findings and a restitution plan for harmed workers and communities.

- Concrete reparative measures at the SABC: measurable targets for leadership, commissioning and editorial authority for historically excluded communities; sustained funding for indigenous music, arts and community journalism; and clear accountability for progress.

The SABC can be rebuilt into a truly public broadcaster that reflects and serves all South Africans. But rebuilding requires truth‑telling first. It requires institutional contrition, concrete action, and long‑term accountability. It requires that the people in positions of power — at the SABC and in government — stop performing unity and start listening to the communities they harmed.

If we mark 90 years, let it be with a pledge: never again will a broadcasting institution be an engine of exclusion and oppression. Let our celebrations include the faces, voices and songs the SABC once silenced. Let memory be honest so our children inherit a media landscape that empowers rather than erases.

We owe this honest reckoning to our forebears, to the workers whose lives were upended, and to the children who will inherit the media we build now. If we refuse truth in favour of sentiment, we will only repeat the mistakes of the past.

In solidarity with deep pain,

N!xau Kealeboga xaN!xau

Founder & Executive Chairman,

AGT Media Group of Companies