Abstract
This paper zooms-in to the moment of the first African-aimed broadcasts to be aired on South African radio, presented by K. E. Masinga in the Zulu language. These took place from the Durban studios of the South African Broadcasting Company (SABC), in 1941. Innovations in microphone technology, moving from carbon microphones in the 1920s to ribbon microphones by the 1940s, gave fuller timbre to the voice of the radio presenter, and considerably reduced the distractions of unintended noise. Such technological evolutions added to the impact of the voice that would sound first in Zulu on the radio. In the critical cultural scholarship of the region, voice has not received as much scholarly attention as other instruments of information, by which models of technological administration were elaborated, in relation to the racially segregated state and its particular vision of society. This paper is concerned not so much with the fact that African audiences were now welcomed as listeners of broadcasts, but rather the nature of the relationship between themselves and the technology of broadcasting.
Published Version
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