DIAGNÓSTICO Y EVALUACIÓN

In the 1960s, almost thirty years after the SABC’s first broadcasts, a Sound Archive was established. The archive collected the radio programmes broadcasted by the SABC radio stations in Johannesburg and also included a Record Library. The content in the archive rapidly grew and already in 1999 the Radio and Sound Archive in Johannesburg had a catalogue of 73 000 tapes, constituting about 200 000 hours of radio broadcasts, a rare and irreplaceable collection of approximately 18 000 matrices and one of the biggest 78 rpm record collections of Africana in South Africa (Training manual, 1998:14;17;67; Phalatse, 1999:10).12 Meanwhile the material in the various regional radio stations of the SABC also grew and by the 1980s it was decided that these stations would all maintain their own archives, albeit understaffed and without adequate equipment.13 Subsequently, the Johannesburg archive became a central “work archive for white news and international services, with a possible shadow archive in Cape Town” (Minutes Nr.3, 1982:3). For the black language services, “the centre where the programmes originated from would serve as a work archive with the shadow archive in the central archive in Johannesburg” (Minutes Nr.3, 1982:3).

The first archivist at the Johannesburg Sound Archive, Thys van Lill, was appointed in 1964. He was succeeded four years later by Monica Breed, who managed the archives for eleven years (TM, 1998:12). Her tenure included an extensive tour of Europe and the BBC in London to view and investigate methods for preservation and cataloguing (TM, 1998:13;

11

Since its inception, the orchestra’s repertoire included various newly commissioned South African works by white composers. This commissioning practice was expanded from 1991 to include the compositions of black composers (Theunissen et al., 1996:167). The orchestra is still active as the Johannesburg Symphony Orchestra.

12

The Training manual will henceforth be referred to as TM. 13

See, Voorlegging aan die radio argiefkomittee. Departement: Nguni-, Venda- en Tsongaradiodienste. [1982] (un-catalogued document). SABC Radio and Sound Archive, Johannesburg.

95

35). She submitted her recommendations in a report called the “Breed Report” (1969), and put in place the archival system that is still used today (Assmann, IA 27/07/2011; TM, 1998:13).14 Breed was succeeded by Isidore Davis who remained in charge of the Sound Archive until 1984 (TM, 1998:13). He built up the wild-life and environmental sounds in the archive to one of the most comprehensive collections of Southern African Sounds (Assmann, IA 27/07/2011). In 1984 the Radio and Sound Archive became a separate section of the Radio Production Services (TM, 1998:13). During that year, Leon Endemann took over as the first manager, and not archivist, of the Radio and Sound Archive. His tenure lasted until 1995. Up until this point the sound archive had functioned under an archivist with three or four assistant archivists. Due to the increasing amount of material to be archived,

Endemann created various divisions to contain the job descriptions and workloads of archivists. These were “Afrikaans”, “English”, “News and Current Affairs”, “Sport”, “Radio RSA” (languages such as Spanish, French and German), “Serious Music” and “Light Music” (Assmann, IA 27/07/2011).

This division of archival material into separate entities (including the differentiation between ‘light’ and ‘serious’ music) constitutes a common practice in radio archives that deal with a staggering influx and accumulation of material daily.15 However, in South Africa the division between ‘light music’ and ‘serious music’ was not only a pragmatic decision, but one employed within a racialised strategy articulated by the nationalist government

according to its Separate Development Strategy. Within this strategy radio programming was developed to ensure that each person had access to a radio station in his or her own language. People were supposed to listen to music inherent to the particular culture implied by the language. This, in the words of Hamm, stressed “the distinctiveness and separateness of ‘his’ cultural/ethnic heritage” (Hamm, 1991:169). Consequently it “led to different

programming strategies for the SABC’s ‘white’ and ‘black’ services” (Hamm, 1991:155). Black radio programming was aimed towards “the culture of the ‘tribal’ group at which a given service was aimed,” which meant, for instance, that “there should be something ‘Zulu’

14

The system that Monica Breed put in place was modelled on the archival system used by the British Broadcasting Corporation in London. However, no information about this system could be obtained. After numerous requests, the “Breed Report” could not be found by the SABC Archives. 15

Other Radio Archives that follow similar divisions include the BBC Radio Archive and the German Radio Archive of Süddeutscher Rundfunk, Stuttgart. See Harrison (1984).

96

about a piece to be played on Radio Zulu” (Hamm, 1991:160). 16 Traditional music was subsequently recorded and programmed to “heighten the listener’s pride in his own culture” (SABC Annual Report, 1953:32 as in Hamm, 1991:150).17 These services were geared towards attracting listeners and traditional music was supplemented and eventually replaced by popular and choir music (Hamm, 1991:160). In contrast, so-called white

programme strategies were geared towards “informational, educational and cultural programming” and the programming was “largely confined to classical and religious items *…+ occasional relief was afforded by semi-classical pieces and the social dance music of the educated classes” (Hamm 1991: 148). During the mid-1980s strict programming along language and ethnic lines was relaxed and after the transition to democracy these radio stations were able to play music according to their own criteria. Regional radio stations all continued to maintain their own archives. Today they remain decentralised, although they share a main frame system and are connected via an online database that allows access to any SABC radio archive in the country from any one of the stations (Jele, RJ 25/07/2011).

In 1992, an umbrella unit called the Media Libraries was established in the Johannesburg archive (TM, 1998:13). It includes the Library,18 the Record Library and the Radio and Sound Archives. Since 2006 this structure has existed under the general management of Ilse

16

These were judged on the following: “Performers should be of the proper ethnicity, members of the proper ‘tribe’. Beyond that, if the piece were instrumental it should draw on melodic or

performance traditions of that ‘tribal’ group, or at least have a title in its language. If vocal, the piece should have a text in the appropriate African language, to help ‘promote self-development through the medium of *ones+ own language’, and this text should preferably relate to the specific culture or history of that ‘tribal’ group.” (Hamm, 1991:160).

17

Much of this ‘traditional music’ that the SABC Radio services subsequently required, was recorded by the various regional branches. Reminiscent of the vision of Hugh Tracey, the SABC wanted to preserve the “folk-songs threatened with extinction” and encourage pride in its various listeners for ‘their own’ music” (Hamm, 1991:150). Hugh Tracey made the first field recordings for the SABC as the Director of the Natal Studios between 1936 and 1947 (Tracey, 1973a; Hamm, 1991:150). Under the direction of Yvonne Huskisson as the SABC’s Organiser of Bantu Music, various teams recorded music and by the late 1960s the recordings amounted to more than 10 000 recordings (see Hamm, 1991:150,161). Various boereorkeste were also financed and broadcasted by the SABC “in an attempt to copy and reconstruct Afrikaans traditional music” (Hamm, 1991:155).

18

A Music Library was maintained and belonged to the National Symphony Orchestra that was situated at the SABC. When this orchestra disbanded during the late 1990s the Library was entrusted to the SABC and became part of the Information Library in the Media Libraries unit (Assmann, 2011a).

97

Assmann.19 The Library is currently managed by Suzette Lombaard and keeps books,

magazines, music scores and a collection of newspaper cuttings that date back to 1927. The Record Library, managed by Thersia Francis, houses a growing collection of 21 000 CD’s and a vast collection of over half a million vinyl records. These include the transcription

recordings made by the SABC, the bulk of which comprises the field recordings made by Yvonne Huskisson.20 The Radio Archive, currently managed by Bennie Jacobs, houses a variety of different audio documents including speeches, interviews, sport programmes and commentaries, music programmes and supplementary material from local and international audio collections and archives such as the BBC. The collection goes back to the first

broadcast by General Jan Smuts in 1927. The Media Libraries further includes a Sound Restoration Unit that does the re-mastering and restoration of the SABC Transcription collection, as well as a collection of pianos and harps that is hired out to professionals (TM 1998: 17; Assmann, 2011). In addition to these collections, the Media Libraries oversee the functions of the nine Provincial Media Libraries, connected to the various Radio Stations in those regions (Assmann, 2011).21

The Media Libraries has also recently become involved with the Written Archive of the SABC. The latter contains documents dealing with, amongst other things, commission agreements, contracts, recording agreements and copyright issues. However, in the seventy years of the SABC’s existence, there has never been any consistent form of records

management.22 The Written Archive was only built in 2008, and Ilse Assmann is leading the

19

Ilse Assmann first served as the manager of the Radio and Sound Archive from 1996 – 2006 (Assmann, IA 27/07/2011), after which Bennie Jacobs was appointed as the current manager. 20

Initially the record library was divided into three sections, the black record library (which contained the music and transcriptions used for the black radio services), the white record library (containing the music and transcriptions used for the white radio services) and the commercial record library (containing the material used for Radio Springbok). (Francis, TF 28/07/2011). This was consolidated under the Media Libraries Unit. See also footnote 17, p.96.

21

These provinces include all nine provinces of South Africa: the Eastern Cape, Free State, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, Northern Cape, North West, and the Western Cape. 22

The file plan used to fall under the custodianship of the Company Secretariat. However with the introduction of the Information Management Plan (IMP), Assmann took over and initiated a Records Management system. She notes: “It involved drafting a corporate File Plan, getting approval from the National Archive, and getting buy-in from the SABC management and staff. It also introduced us to formal project management, which was a learning curve for me and my team. We are currently working to systematically capture all our older paper records on an indexing system we acquired for

98

team currently working to employ a file plan and suitable Electronic Records Management System. Assmann (IA 27/07/2011) explained the immensity of the work:

We have over two million files in the archive. I think there are 65 000 boxes in the backlog, and then I am not talking about all the boxes that are still strewn across storage rooms in all the SABC’s regional branches, but only about the boxes we knew of when we built the area.23

Assmann (IA, 27/07/2011) points out that although this “arrangement” of not archiving written material might have suited the SABC well in the past as it made it easy for

documents of a sensitive nature to disappear, it is currently causing immense legal problems and hold-ups:

For years we could not exploit Springbok Radio because we did not have the contracts. We could not exploit the transcriptions because we did not have the contracts. Now with this action that we have started, the contracts are beginning to come out and we can make decisions. It was just one of those things that was completely inaccessible and that we are now trying to make accessible.

Until the 1980s, archiving at the SABC was not given a very high priority. This is illustrated by the fact that a lot of material was thrown away with the SABC’s move to Auckland Park in 1975 without consideration of its archival value. The archive still keeps a low profile within the SABC structure.24 The current manager of the Radio and Sound Archive, Bennie Jacobs, ascribes this to the fact that the archive is not a money generating department (Jacobs, BJ 25/07/2011). Ilse Assmann (IA 27/07/2011) points out:

this purpose. The next step will be to obtain a suitable Electronic Records Management System. This is being investigated at the moment” (Assmann, 2011).

23

Interview material with Ilse Assmann has been translated from Afrikaans. 24

Currently the archive is not a top priority at the SABC. The Media Libraries unit is situated within the Radio Broadcast Facilities department and falls under Technology and IT. Television archives, on the other hand, falls under Content Enterprise and television news archives falls under News. One of the main problems with this arrangement is that the general manager of the Media Libraries reports to Technology who then reports to Group. In other words the archive does not report straight to Group but has to rely on the enthusiasm of general managers from above, keeping the profile of the archive low (Jacobs, BJ 25/07/2011).

99

Our big problem is always, and this is true for any other archive or library or information service, top-management knows they need you but they are seldom sure what to do with you.

In order to enhance the profile of the archive within the SABC and make it more financially viable, a project has been initiated to consolidate all the archives (radio and television, print, audio and video), into an integrated Information Management and Archives Unit (Assmann, IA 27/07/2011). The proposed project will have a significant influence on the functioning of the archive internally as well as within the Corporation (Assmann, 2011).25 Currently all of these archives function according to their own systems and protocols of selection,

classification and arrangement. The Radio and Sound Archive of the SABC alone has to deal with an enormous amount of material pouring in every day from more than six radio stations. Consolidating the various criteria used for selection is therefore vital for the effective functioning of the archive.