South Africa
SOUTH AFRICA lies at the southern tip of the African continent.
BBC Records
Although an article in DWM issue 187 (June 1992) claimed that Doctor Who "went to countries that still broadcast black and white television services, such as South Africa", the series was never broadcast there - the country did not establish TV until the mid-1970s, and this was only ever a full colour PAL service (see below), so no black and white episodes would have been shown.
BBC Prime was available from 1999, but it appears that the schedule broadcast in South Africa was different to that seen in Europe and elsewhere, and did not include Doctor Who.
So although the series never made it to TV in South Africa, Doctor Who was available in other ways.
DOCTOR WHO IN SOUTH AFRICA
Peter Cushing and the Daleks
The first of the two Peter Cushing Dalek movies was shown in cinemas throughout South Africa.
Listings have been found for the Transvaal province in the north-east. It was shown in that region at various cinemas in various cities for short runs during 1966, 1967 and 1969, initially on its own, then later as a double-bill; the first listing appearing in the online archive of Die Transvaler was on 8 March 1966 in Germiston, with the last on 17 December 1969 in Brakpan. (There were no newspaper listings for the film at all in 1968.)
The film was billed under its original title "Dr Who and the Daleks".
The sequel does not appear to have been shown in cinemas. But it did air on SABC TV on Friday, 29 January 1982 from 10.44pm to 12.05am. It was billed as "Daleks Verower die Aarde". (It may have aired with Afrikaans sub-titles rather than being dubbed.)
(The Die Transvaler online archive only goes up to 1987, so any subsequent screenings of either film at cinemas or on TV are not recorded.)
Television
Television was not introduced to South Africa until the late 1970s, when the government finally bowed to public pressure after years of banning television as being morally corrupting.
A PAL colour system television service was launched by the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) (aka Suid Afrikaanse Uitsaaikorporasieon (SAUK)) on 5 May 1975 in some areas, with nationwide coverage from 5 January 1976; half the broadcasts were in English, half in Afrikaans.
Of note, the majority of English content was American product, as due to its opposition to Apartheid, UK Equity refused to allow sales of British drama programmes to the country. Doctor Who was therefore never shown.
However, some ITV programmes were certainly broadcast in South Africa - for instance, Space 1999 series 1 (billed as "Alpha 1999") aired in 1977 and 1978, and film cans for other series bearing ITC Entertainment and SABC / SAUK stickers have turned up on eBay.
There have been claims that British television programmes - including Doctor Who - may have been "smuggled" into the country from other African nations and shown illegally in order to circumvent the Equity boycott, but there are NO TV billings for Dr Who / Doctor Who in the Die Transvaler so that as a possibility is extremely unlikely.
Aside from the movie listings, the only other OCR returns we got for "Dr Who" were a report on William Hartnell's death in April 1975, and a generic report about the BBC in 1977. Searches for other well-known BBC series of that period also drew nil returns. But it should be noted that the text in Die Transvaler is in Afrikaans, and as such some series titles - like the afore-mentioned Space 1999 - may have been different.
CROSS-BORDER TRANSMISSIONS?
Some residents living near the borders could potentially have seen Doctor Who via transmission signals coming from neighbouring countries. Of those with which a border was shared, only three aired Doctor Who - which may have been seen in isolated parts of South Africa:
- Rhodesia / Zimbabwe in the North East (a run Hartnells from August 1965 to circa September 1966, then two shorter runs of Tom Baker episodes January 1979 to January 1981)
- Swaziland (now Eswatini) to the East (several runs of Tom Baker episodes from February 1978 to November 1983)
- Botswana to the North, may have had some Baker or Peter Davison serials in the 1990s
PAUL McGANN
It was reported on ITV's Teletex service in mid-1996 that South Africa "was interested" in purchasing the TV Movie. However, as far as we can tell, no local TV station acquired the film for broadcast.
The film was released on DVD in 2001: this was the UK release imported and distributed by GTV - see below.
The TV Movie aired several times in 2002 and 2003 on the Sci-Fi Channel's branch in Southern Africa; while this arm of the satellite station had much of the same material as its UK counterpart, it was a separate feed and had its own scheduled programming.
See that PROFILE for further detail.
Books and Novelisations
Although the Doctor Who series did not screen on TV, books about the series were available in the early to mid-1970s and the late 1980s.
The 1972 Pan Books Ltd / Piccolo edition of The Making of Doctor Who has a South African price of 60c printed on the back cover.
While this would otherwise be an unusual item to be on sale in a country that didn't have a television service - and for whom the target readership wouldn't have known what Doctor Who was! - it was quite common for a book publisher to sell TV tie-ins in countries where the shows didn't air. Pan and Piccolo also published a number of tie-ins based on popular 1970s ITV series, such as Timeslip, UFO, Follyfoot, The Persuaders, Here Come the Double Deckers and Freewheelers, while World Distributors produced novels based on US series, such as Land of the Giants, none of which were seen on TV in South Africa at the time, and yet these books are pre-printed with prices for the South African market.
No pre-printed price for South Africa appears on the back covers, but on the final page of some of the Target paperbacks published in 1974, 1975, 1976 and 1977 was a list of addresses to which readers could write for a catalogue and to go into the draw to win a set of books and receive a free Target badge; this included an address in South Africa:
TARGET BOOKS,
Purnell & Sons,
505, C.N.A. Building,
110, Commissioner Street,
Johannesburg
A decade later, the run of Target Books published from late 1987 until mid-1988 (first edition and reprinted paperbacks, and the final seven hardbacks) had the addresses for the distributors printed on the back covers, including one in Bergville (Bergvlei):
SOUTH AFRICA: CENTURY HUTCHINSON SOUTH AFRICA (PTY) LTD, PO Box 337, Bergvle, 2012 South Africa
This address also appeared on the back cover of the seven Star Books 2-in-1 reprint editions published from 1988 to 1989.
In recent years, Penguin Random House publishers, who own the "BBC Books" catalogue, sell the Doctor Who novels, Target book reprints and audiobooks through its South African branch.
DVDs
Four stories were released on DVD in 2001; these appear to be disks imported from the UK by GTV, a video distributor based in Gauteng, rather than being locally-produced editions (South Africa is also Region 2).
The following classifications were allocated by the South African Film and Publications Board (FPB):
- The Five Doctors (A)
- The Robots of Death (PGV)
- Spearhead from Space (PG)
- The TV Movie (PGV)
GTV was acquired by Nu Metro Home Entertainment in the early 2000s. Nu Metro released several New Series DVDs and Blu-rays in the mid-2000s and 2010s. In 2014, they issued The Web of Fear (PG). Again, these would have been imports rather than South African pressings..
New Series
Although the "Classic" series was not shown, the New Series of Doctor Who was available in South Africa on BBC Prime / BBC Entertainment (South Africa) since late 2008. And from November 2018, it has been shown on the Free-to-Air web-based service TV2Go.
South Africa in Doctor Who
- Gerald Curtis (Elyon in The Daleks) was born in South Africa.
- South African actor Johan Malherbe was apparently in Dr Who and the Daleks (possibly as a Thal?).
- Walter Randall (The Aztecs, The Crusade, The Daleks' Master Plan, Inferno) was from South Africa.
- Glyn Jones - who wrote The Space Museum and appeared in The Sontaran Experiment - was born in Durban.
- Arne Gordon (the Empire State Building Guide in The Chase) was from South Africa.
- Producer John Wiles was born in South Africa.
- The Doctor mentions the Relief of Mafeking in The Daleks' Master Plan, and again in The Invasion of Time.
- Leonard Sachs (The Massacre and Arc of Infinity) is South African.
- The glaciers were being held back by the Ioniser base in South Africa (The Ice Warriors).
- The Krotons had South African accents!
- There was a Boer War zone in The War Games.
- Clive Scott (Linwood in The Mind of Evil) was born in Johannesburg.
- The 1972 serial The Mutants was a veiled analogy of the racial tensions that were occurring in the country at the time.
- David Bailie (Taren Capel in The Robots of Death) was born in South Africa.
- Writer Malcolm Kohll (Delta and the Bannermen) was born in South Africa.
