When 702 Was Where South Africans Spoke to Each Other

A reflection on the role 702 once played in South African life, and why that conversation still matters today.

I grew up in what many of us once called “702Land”. 702 was the radio station that, during the height of Apartheid, prided itself on being independent and providing a space where South Africans could hear voices and perspectives that did not fit at all into the politics of the time. Being part of 702Land came with a sense of community and belonging. Talk radio offered a platform where robust but respectful debate and engagement could happen. While I was too young to attend its first-ever multi-racial Concert in the Park, the proceeds of which went to Operation Hunger, I grew up with the cultural markers of the station, including my Solid Gold CD and my Things to Do in 702Land book.

Those memories came back to me recently at an event at Primedia where the book The Story of 702: In Touch, In Tune and Independent was launched. One of the authors, David Williams, spoke about what were then household names: John Berks, Stan Katz, Alex Jay (who I still enjoy listening to on Jacaranda FM), Jenny Crys-Williams, Chris Gibbons and our “eye in the sky”, Aki Anastasiou. For many listeners these voices were not merely broadcasters. They were part of the rhythm of daily South African life.

Like many quintessential South African stories, the origins of the station also include a Jewish chapter (think tinned pilchards, chappies and Rooibos tea). 702 was founded by the entrepreneurial Kirsh brothers, Natie and Issie. But the station they created was never meant to tell a Jewish story alone. It was meant to tell a South African story. The Jewish story simply formed part of that broader national conversation, as did the stories of many other communities who recognised themselves in the discussions taking place on the airwaves.

For most South African Jews, that connection carried deep emotional meaning. Jewish South Africans arrived in this country with their own histories of persecution and displacement, carrying memories of societies where exclusion and hostility were never far away. In South Africa they encountered other communities navigating their own struggles for dignity and recognition. The histories were different, but the underlying experiences of vulnerability and exclusion were not entirely unfamiliar. That created natural points of connection between communities who understood something about what it meant to live with memory, identity and belonging.

In that sense, the idea that communities could speak to each other, challenge each other and learn from each other was not simply a broadcasting philosophy. It was part of the civic culture that platforms like 702 helped to nurture.

Over time, however, many listeners have felt that something of that spirit has faded. Conversations that once welcomed robust disagreement now often feel narrower, shaped less by curiosity than by ideological certainty. For many in the Jewish community, the shift has not simply been intellectual. It has also been emotional. A station that once felt like part of a shared South African conversation has sometimes come to feel distant, even hostile. The sense that a natural connection between communities has been weakened is, for many, quietly painful.

For many in the Jewish community, who overwhelmingly identify as Zionists and support Israel’s right to exist in peaceful co-existence with its neighbours, even while holding diverse views on its policies, have felt marginalised. Since Hamas’s barbaric attack on Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023, and Israel’s war against Hamas, a latent anti-Jewish sentiment appears to have reared itself, with a seeming attempt to silence the Jewish voice. Where silence was not possible, there was ridicule and blatant Jew-baiting.

Against that backdrop, something unexpected happened on 702 shortly after the book launch. Aubrey Masango invited Mary Kluk, National Vice Chair of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies and Director of the Durban Holocaust & Genocide Centre, onto his evening programme to discuss antisemitism.

Masango began the interview by making something clear to listeners. He had a genuine interest in the subject and intended to defend his guest’s right to speak, even while taking calls from listeners who might strongly disagree.

What followed was not a shouting match but a conversation. In today’s media environment that should not be remarkable. Yet it increasingly is.

Masango asked important questions about Jewish identity: who is considered Jewish, whether Judaism is a religion, an ethnicity or something broader, and how antisemitism has evolved over time. Kluk responded by drawing on the observations of the late Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, who pointed out how antisemitism has historically mutated with the times. In the Middle Ages Jews were hated for their religion. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries they were hated for their race. In more recent decades hostility toward the Jewish nation state has often become the latest vehicle through which the hatred expresses itself.

The conversation moved through history, identity, persecution and belonging. At times Masango probed difficult issues, including debates about Jewish identity in Africa and the experience of different Jewish communities around the world. Later, listeners called in with their own perspectives, some supportive and others critical.

What made the exchange remarkable was not simply the subject matter but the tone. In a media environment that often rewards outrage and ideological certainty, two South Africans were simply talking to each other with curiosity and respect.

That such a conversation feels notable is itself a reflection on the moment we inhabit. South Africa’s constitutional order rests on freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of thought. Yet in the current climate, journalists and media houses who create space for open discussion on contentious topics often find themselves under pressure from competing ideological camps.

Masango’s willingness to host the conversation was therefore both refreshing and quietly courageous.

In reflecting on the history of Radio 702, David Saks, another of the book’s authors and a representative of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, described 702 as more than a broadcaster. It was, he argued, part of a “cultural revolution” that brought communities hitherto separated by race, as well as political beliefs, into conversation with one another.

The Masango interview offered a glimpse of what that tradition once looked like. It reminded listeners that 702, and radio at its best, can still provide something increasingly rare in public discourse: a space where South Africans speak to each other rather than at or past each other. And that every community can be welcomed.

If legacy media is to retain its relevance in a fragmented and often hostile public conversation, it will not be through louder voices or sharper outrage. It will be through moments like this, where curiosity replaces accusation and conversation replaces the ideological purism that too often dominates public debate today. For a brief moment, at least, it felt as though 702 had rediscovered the role it once played in bringing communities into conversation rather than retreating into rigidly dogmatic positions.