Theater for Development and TV Nation: Notes on an Educational Soap Opera in South Africa

Abstract

"South Africa—a world in one country." This sunny slogan of the South African Tourist Board is also a sober reminder that post-apartheid—or, more accurately, post-anti-apartheid—South Africa contains within its borders at least two worlds. Development and underdevelopment or, in the current global vernacular, North and South, are separated not only by residual racial boundaries but also by physical as well as socioeconomic barriers between rich and poor, especially in Johannesburg, Africa's wealthiest city. Due in part to these barriers, North and South collide perhaps more vividly in the national media, especially on television, than they do on the streets. On television, which reaches the urban half and some peri-urban parts of the population, sounds and images of global consumer culture (in the format of commercials as well as narrative fiction) interrupt, literally and figuratively, the documentary representation of national history or daily life. 1 Fictional series, especially American soap operas, score generally higher ratings than local documentaries, but the latter have usually received more attention from policy-makers, producers, and critics. 2 This is the case in part because documentaries, especially histories of the struggle such as Ulibambe Lingashoni (Hold up the [setting] sun, 1994), a quasi-official history of the African National Congress (ANC), liberation movement turned governing party after the historic election in April 1994, invoke the moral authority of the theater, film, and video of the anti-apartheid years, and in part because they currently help to fulfil the mandate not merely for local content, but, in the language of the 1997 Green Paper on Broadcasting, for the larger goal of "nation-building" through a "broadcasting system [that is] relevant, accessible, diverse, and responsive to the communication needs of the country" (DPTB Green Paper ch.1).