Exploring the Radiant Allure: Star Iconism and the Significance of Radio Mmabatho and Radio Bop on the South African Media Landscape

During their heydays, Radio Mmabatho and Radio Bop were very popular and successful radio stations in what was then called Bophuthatswana in South Africa. With Radio Mmabatho using the motto “Lentswe la setshaba” [the voice of the nation] and Radio Bop using “The station with a mind of its own” the two stations employed highly skilled and talented on-air personalities who were well-informed and commanded good language skills of the target language community as part of their trademark. These on-air personalities later played a significant role in the broadcasting industry in South Africa as they dominated the most popular broadcasting stations in the country. Yet, despite the successes and contribution of these radio stations to the South African media landscape, virtually nothing has been written about these radio stations and many other radio stations that occupied a critical space before the country’s 1994 democratic dispensation. This chapter endeavours to fill this gap by essentially attempting a diachronic study chronicling the history and significance of Radio Mmabatho and Radio Bop and some of the factors that accounted for their success. The study uses semi-structured interviews and relies on the insights derived from the concept of star iconism, to argue that on-air radio personalities employed by these stations were the main locomotives behind their successes. The chapter, therefore, builds on embryonic research that examines the relationship between on-air personalities and the success of the stations they are associated with.