ABSTRACT
The role of public service broadcasters in promoting minority languages is widely acknowledged. In South Africa, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) is constitutionally mandated to ensure that all eleven official languages enjoy ‘equitable treatment’ and ‘parity of esteem’. However, these aspirations are not always realized, as English dominates SABC’s programming. Apart from the diminishing time allocated to indigenous languages on radio, a more worrisome but unexplored practice is the increase in syndicated news, which is gradually ‘colonizing’ indigenous language news bulletins. Employing the hegemony theory as a conceptual lens, this chapter examines the impact of news syndication on indigenous language radio stations and argues that syndication on indigenous language radio stations is a tacit endorsement of English’s hegemony. The findings indicate that resource constraints, professional factors and industry dynamics were behind the use of English language audio clips on indigenous language news bulletins and that this trend has serious implications for the future development of indigenous languages.
