This Was South Africa's First-ever Television Broadcast

Being a laggard did, however, have one big benefit: although black-and-white TVs were available for purchase by consumers who could not afford the more expensive colour sets, the first SABC broadcasts made use of the PAL phase alternate line encoding system, meaning South Africans could watch colour TV from day one.

South Africa's first broadcast was presented in a formal Afrikaans, led by presenter Heinrich Marnitz , with Dorianne Berry presenting in English. Although regional testing had begun as early as May 1975 in Johannesburg, Marnitz and Berry's was the first national broadcast.

Marnitz was a radio sports commentator whose career at the SABC spanned 29 years between 1968 and 1997 - he still hosts a popular music show on Pretoria FM. Berry, on the other hand, went on to host a number of popular shows including Prime Time and the iconic Good Morning South Africa .

Some of the first locally produced shows in the 1970s included English-language family drama series The Dingleys and The Villagers , as well as comedy series Biltong and Potroast and variety programme. The Knicky Knacky Knoo Show . Set in a small mining town on the Witswatersrand, The Villagers followed the sophisticated McRae family, whose father is the new manager of the local Village Reef mine, as they acclimatise to small town life.

For the first six years of television in South Africa, only one channel - TV1 - was available, which split content evenly between English and Afrikaans. In 1982, TV2 and TV3 were introduced to cater to the Zulu/Xhosa and Tswana/Sotho urban demographics, respectively. TV4, a sports and entertainment channel, was introduced in 1985. Despite the addition of new channels, the National Party government maintained absolute control of television broadcasting until the introduction of M-Net in 1986.