Dr Albert Hertzog confirms that television would not be introduced in South Africa

On 7 March 1964, the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, Dr Albert Hertzog, confirmed that the government's policy regarding television was unchanged. Television was not to be introduced in South Africa. In 1971, the SABC was finally allowed to introduce a television service, which began experimental broadcasts in the main cities in mid-1975, before the service went nationwide at the beginning of 1976. "The reason for television's late arrival in South Africa was ideological, as the white minority regime saw it as a threat to its control of the broadcasting media, even though the state-controlled South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) had a virtual monopoly on radio broadcasting. It also saw the new medium as a threat to Afrikaans, and to the Afrikaner volk, giving undue prominence to English, and creating unfair competition for the Afrikaans press. The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) is the state owned broadcaster in South Africa, and was for many years the monopoly, controlled by the white minority National Party government. The National Party's Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, Dr Albert Hertzog, said that TV would come to South Africa 'over my dead body', also denouncing it as 'a miniature bioscope [cinema] over which parents would have no control', while the influential Dutch Reformed Church, saw the new medium as degenerate and immoral. The National Party (Afrikaans: Nasionale Party) (with its members sometimes known as Nationalists or Nats) was the governing party of South Africa from June 4th 1948 until May 9th 1994, and was disbanded in 2005... However, many white South Africans, including Afrikaners, did not share Hertzog's reactionary views, and regarded the hostility towards what he called 'the little black box' as absurd and embarrassing. When Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon in 1969, South Africa was one of the few countries unable to watch the event live. Other (less economically advanced) countries in Africa had already introduced it, while neighbouring Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, had introduced television in 1961, with the financial backing of some South African private investors." (Extract from nationmaster.com (online encyclopedia) on the Controversy over introduction of TV in South Africa)