Radio Waves of Inclusion: A Practitioner’s Perspective on the Catholic Church’s Use of Radio Broadcasting for Evangelisation in South Africa

Over the 100 years of radio broadcasting in South Africa, the medium has come to mean different things to different people. While it was founded with the intention of excluding the majority of citizens, in that in the early 1920s to 1940s it only catered to white audiences, over the years it has proven to be a tool for inclusion, as different interest groups have used it as a platform to express their worldview amid the chorus of voices in the diverse media landscape. This chapter examines the importance that the Catholic Church attaches to the media in general and how the Church has been called upon to look at the media and their significance in evangelisation as a means of preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Using South Africa’s first and only Catholic radio station, Radio Veritas, it considers the content of this station, as well as one of the key documents of the Catholic Church, Miranda Prorsus, written by Pope Pius XII (1957), that highlights the importance of key forms of traditional media, radio, television and cinema, with the focus being on the section about radio and evangelisation. The study argues that for the Catholic Church in South Africa, while it has been essential to have physical spaces to congregate, such as church buildings and centres, radio offers another “meeting place”, namely over the airwaves.