Broadcasting the Rainbow Nation: An SABC to Public Interest Programming

The chapter examines the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s (SABC) drama and news themes to ascertain commonality and diversity within and between the two genres in order to find out how the public service broadcaster (PSB) performs its public service mandate. It introduces ‘broadcasting the rainbow nation’ as a conceptual framework in a theoretical update of the public sphere theory. Data for the study was gathered using archival collection and analysed using content analysis. Findings demonstrate that the SABC’s ability to perform its public service mandate in a liberalised and competitive broadcasting market is enabled by operationalisation of the notion of the ‘rainbow nation’. The broadcaster adopted innovative strategies, organisational culture, professional protocols and politics which were facilitated by the notion of broadcasting the rainbow nation. As South Africa celebrates 50 years of television, this study illustrates a marked shift in the role of the SABC from its use by the state to socialise black people to white domination and normalise racial segregation, to reflecting contemporary society while portraying unity in spite of diversity.