Music censorship and surveillance in apartheid South Africa

Abstract:

The current study documents the procedures used by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) from1974 to 1996 in the censorship of music. The disquisition argues that the SABC, as a national broadcaster, served as the most prominent censor of musical production and dissemination during that time.

In addition, the study attempts to show that the censorship of music by the SABC was inherently connected with apartheid ideology in both moral and political terms but also that the SABC Acceptance Committees for radio broadcasts attempted to align themselves with more general state methods of censorship (although often inconsistent). This relationship, although not directly connected with the state censorship apparatus, functioned as the state's chief censor in the restriction of music. The study reports on a visit to the SABC Radio Library and Sound Archives in February 2012 and provides an analysis and discussion of documents found in the archive as well as how these findings relate to the broader arguments supplied in the thesis.

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