From the first black-and-white broadcast to today’s world of high-definition streaming and smart screens, the introduction of television on 5 January 1976 marked more than a media milestone – it redefined how a nation saw itself.
This is the second in a series of articles TechCentral is publishing this week to mark the anniversary of the launch of television broadcasting in South Africa on 5 January 1976. Read the first piece here.
Over the past five decades, it has informed, entertained and connected South Africans through rapid technological change. As the country marks the 50th anniversary since the first official national broadcast, TechCentral looks back to those early days of TV.
The first broadcast was presented in Afrikaans by Heinrich Marnitz, with Dorianne Berry delivering the English-language segments. Although regional test transmissions started in Johannesburg in May 1975, this was the first time television reached the entire country.
Unlike many other African countries (and the rest of the world), the introduction of TV was remarkably late in South Africa. Nigeria launched Western Nigeria Television in 1959, while Rhodesia, which is now Zimbabwe, adopted TV in 1960.
The delay was no accident. The ultra-conservative National Party government regarded television as a direct threat to its control of information. It feared that it would expose South Africans to the ideas and images beyond the state’s carefully managed worldview and accelerate the dominance of English over Afrikaans. The minister of posts & telegraphs, Albert Hertzog, famously described TV as the “the devil’s own box” for spreading communism and immorality.
But South Africa eventually adopted TV because technological, economic and political realities made continued resistance untenable. The government recognised that the absence of TV was a visible symbol of the country’s backwardness, and a government commission in 1971 concluded that with the advent of satellite technology and video cassettes, people would soon be able to bypass government censorship entirely.
Straight to colour
The removal of the ultra-verkrampte Hertzog by Prime Minister John Vorster in 1968 also softened the government’s stance. However, the state still wanted to maintain its grip, and by launching TV through the SABC, it could shape language use, editorial content and political messaging.
Ironically, South Africa’s late entry into television delivered one major advantage. While many households still owned black-and-white sets, the SABC launched its service using the PAL (phase alternate line) broadcast standard, enabling colour television from day one.
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The inaugural broadcast in Auckland Park, Johannesburg was carried by the SABC and transmitted in the early evening. It was deliberately formal, restrained and symbolic. It was meant to be seen as controlled extension of radio rather than a disruptive new force.
Berry, who now lives in Seattle in the US, remembers that first day vividly. She told TechCentral in a phone interview that while there had been numerous rehearsals and test broadcasts, the day itself was markedly different.
Watch the first-ever broadcast on SABC television
“It wasn’t like walking into the building for the first time. It was different. No one was joking. I knew we were making history, but I didn’t realise what the power of the camera meant. I would be on the beach with my kids and people would want my autograph. We were in their homes,” she said.
Both Berry and Marnitz, who retired this year from Pretoria FM where he covered the foreign news for 16 years, were in radio before they were chosen during auditions to be the first faces of South African television. They both hosted a music show on Johannesburg radio station Highveld and auditioned together.
Marnitz told TechCentral that he did not fully appreciate at the time that he had been part of an historic moment.
“Everybody was aware, totally aware, of the magnificence of the occasion; no games were played. Everything was so serious in the passages. There was a very strange feeling in the passages… All the directors and the programme managers were sitting in the foyer with television sets in front of them looking very worried. But I didn’t realise that that occasion was as big as it was,” he said.
Asked how he feels in hindsight about those early days of TV, Marnitz told TechCentral: “To be quite honest, during the night, when I see it now, I get goosebumps realising how big that occasion was at the time.
“During the period running up to 5 January 1976 we were busy preparing, not only for the opening, but for implementing TV on a-day-to-day format after the opening. So, there was no stopping after it. I thought I was just part of the show, but looking back today, 50 years since, and it is still remembered by the public as a major happening in this country, as part of the history of the country, and I get goosebumps.”
‘Part of the world’
Although Marnitz and Berry played no role in programming decisions or political direction, each came to recognise, at different moments, that television would profoundly shape the country’s social and political landscape.
“I realised really soon. The stranglehold on the news was so incredibly tight … but you were also getting international news that made you realise that suddenly you are part of the world,” said Berry.
For Marnitz, the realisation came later. He said the early focus was on the novelty of seeing familiar faces on screen and the entertainment on offer, driven largely by what he described as a “curiosity factor”.
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“But during the 1980s, serious political problems developed in the country, and the programme content, especially the news, was being strictly controlled,” he said.
By contrast, he points to the broadcast of the 1995 Rugby World Cup as an example of television’s positive evolution. “Rugby played a major role through television in bringing together and uniting different cultures and people,” Marnitz said.
Like Marnitz, Berry has fond memories of her days in TV. Asked to share some mistakes where she had to improvise, she said there were many. One was when she worked on the iconic Good Morning South Africa, where they often went to small towns for broadcasts. The team was in Upington in the Northern Cape and the cameramen and army, which was overseeing a marathon, managed to lose the runners in the dark.
Berry had to ad lib for 12 minutes until the runners were located.
She recalls that ahead of the inaugural broadcast, the SABC operated a public helpline during the test transmissions, staffed by senior employees. One caller, she said, was “enraged” by the alternating language schedule, unable to understand why the afternoon broadcast was in English and the evening in Afrikaans, only for the pattern to reverse the following day.
For the first six years, South Africans had access to just one channel, TV1, which split its programming evenly between English and Afrikaans. In 1982, the SABC launched TV2 and TV3 to serve urban Zulu/Xhosa and Tswana/Sotho audiences respectively. A fourth channel, TV4, focusing on sport and entertainment, followed in 1985.
Despite this expansion, the National Party government maintained strict control over broadcast content. That grip only began to loosen with the launch of subscription broadcaster M-Net in 1986. – (c) 2026 NewsCentral Media
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