Book review: “My Radio Memory: Listening to the Listener” edited by Robin Sewlal

 

By Shorba Harkhu

I first came across this book at the Alan Paton Literary Festival held at UKZN on the 23-24 May 2025, where the author was a guest speaker. Robin Sewlal is an advocate and academic, and was once a presenter at Capital Radio. As an avid radio listener, I had to get my hands on this book.

Reading through this book brought back many memories of me growing up as a teenager, listening to Springbok Radio and Capital Radio 604. How many of you remember the Top 20 on Springbok Radio or serials such as the adventures of Jet Jungle or the true crime drama Squad Cars which was broadcast on a Friday night at 7.30pm, or the Springbok Radio daytime serials.  I used to recall these daytime serials blaring from the transistor radios of households in my neighbourhood, no doubt when mothers tuned in while doing their household chores.

   

My Radio Memory takes a nostalgic look at radio over the last hundred years and what the medium has meant to listeners, broadcasters, and communities across the country. It fittingly contains a hundred anecdotal accounts. Professor Ahmed Bawa mentions in his narrative that the medium was magical to him …”it was a daily teleportation to a magical world.” I particularly like the anecdote written by Clive Read entitled “Thank you radio for the delicious Indian food.” He was a sound engineer for the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and would often go to Indian homes to record interviews, where there would always be delicious food on offer.

Other contributors who share their memories in the book are Professor Jonathan Jansen who recalls his aunt Winnie, who would tell anyone who would listen in great detail what happened in the previous episode of some of her favourite serials on Springbok Radio. He tried to avoid her, otherwise he would have been subjected to a long retelling of a radio soapie. Dr Betty Govinden remembers her excitement when her father bought a brand-new radio. Entertainment for the journalist Grant Clark growing up in the 1980s spelled outdoor games and Springbok Radio, where the weekend began and ended with listening to serials on this radio. Still others recounted how radio shaped or influenced their political, social or cultural lives.

Though not academic, this book will interest readers who feel the need to understand South Africa’s cultural, political, and social landscape, and the role radio played in it.

 Reference

Sewlal, R. (2023). My radio memory: listening to the listener. Durban North, South Africa, Radiocracy.