Radio Soundings

Liz Gunner is visiting research professor in the School of Languages, University of Johannesburg. She has taught in South Africa, Sierra Leone and England. Her research primarily focusses on radio, popular culture, orality, and on the intersection of performance and the political in Southern Africa. She has published extensively in journals such as African Affairs, Research in African Literatures and Journal of Southern African Studies. Her most recent books include the co-edited Radio in Africa: Publics, Cultures, Communities (2012) and Power, Marginality and African Oral Literature (with Graham Furniss, Cambridge, 1995).

• Introduction: radio, the SABC and the politics of culture; Part I. Sound and 'Migration': 1. K. E. Masinga, Zulu Radio and the politics of 'migrant' aurality; 2. Remembering the past, making the present: the radio worlds of Alexius Buthelezi 1961–1978; Part II. Distance and Intimacy: 3. Exile: Bloke Modisane and the BBC 1959–1987; 4. 'Africa on the rise': the early 1960s, and the radio Voice of Lewis Nkosi; Part III. Drama, Language, and Daily Life: 5. Untidy boundaries, restless identities: Zulu serial drama in the 1970s; 6. Radio drama in the time of violence: Yiz' Uvalo (In Spite of Fear) December 1986–May 1987; 7. 'Ikusasa Lethu' (Our Tomorrow): the 'glorious decade'? Radio drama of the 1990s; 8. Finding a centre; Conclusion: dances of power; References; Index.

'… Gunner's investigation of the BBC archives as well as deep knowledge of Zulu sources living and passed away is second to none and gives her account of radio and the black modern a personal voice as well as the gravity of history.' Loren Kruger, Research in African Literatures