The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) is the state-owned broadcaster in South Africa and provides 18 radio stations (AM/FM) as well as 3 television broadcasts to the general public.

Radio broadcasting began in South Africa in 1923. The SABC was established in 1936 through an Act of Parliament, and replaced the previous state-controlled African Broadcasting Corporation, formed in 1927, which was dissolved in the same year. It was a state monopoly for many years, and was controlled by the government. During National Party rule from 1948 onwards, it came under increasing criticism and accusations of being biased towards the then ruling party. At one time most of its senior management were members of the Broederbond, the Afrikaner secret society and later drawn from institutions like Stellenbosch University. It was also known officially in Afrikaans as Suid-Afrikaanse Uitsaaikorporasie (SAUK), but this term is now only used by the SABC when referring to the Corporation in the spoken word on SABC2's Afrikaans TV news and on the Afrikaans radio station RSG. Although, the Afrikaans newscasts on SABC2 uses SABC Nuus instead of SAUK Nuus. The term is also still widely used by Afrikaans print media.

A digital system is a data technology that uses discrete (discontinuous) values. By contrast, non-digital (or analog) systems represent information using a continuous function. Although digital representations are discrete, the information represented can be either discrete, such as numbers and letters or continuous, such as sounds, images, and other measurements.

The word digital comes from the same source as the word digit and digitus (the Latin word for finger), as fingers are used for discrete counting. It is most commonly used in computing and electronics, especially where real-world information is converted to binary numeric form as in digital audio and digital photography.

When data is transmitted, or indeed handled at all, a certain amount of noise enters into the signal. Noise can have several causes: data transmitted wirelessly, such as by radio, may be received inaccurately, suffer interference from other wireless sources, or pick up background noise from the rest of the universe. Microphones pick up both the intended signal as well as background noise without discriminating between signal and noise, so when audio is encoded digitally, it typically already includes noise.

News is the communication of selected information on current events which is presented by print, broadcast, Internet, or word of mouth to a third-party or mass audience.

One theory claims that the English word "news" developed in the 14th century as a special use of the plural form of "new". In Middle English, the equivalent word was newes, like the French nouvelles and the German neues. Similar developments are found in the Slavic languages – the Czech and Slovak noviny (from nový, "new"), the cognate Polish nowiny and Russian novosti – and in the Celtic languages: the Welsh newyddion (from newydd) and the Cornish nowodhow (from nowydh).

Before the invention of newspapers in the early 17th century, official government bulletins and edicts were circulated at times in some centralized empires.

The first documented use of an organized courier service for the diffusion of written documents is in Egypt, where Pharaohs used couriers for the diffusion of their decrees in the territory of the State (2400 BC). This practice almost certainly has roots in the much older practice of oral messaging and may have been built on a pre-existing infrastructure.

Julius Sello Malema (born 3 March 1981, in Seshego) is a South African politician, and the former president of the African National Congress Youth League. Malema occupies a notably controversial position in South African public and political life; having risen to prominence with his support for African National Congress president, and later President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma. He has been described by both Zuma and the Premier of Limpopo Province as the "future leader" of South Africa. Less favourable portraits paint him as a "reckless populist" with the potential to destabilise South Africa and to spark racial conflict. He was convicted of hate speech in March 2010 and again in September 2011. In November 2011 he was found guilty of sowing divisions within the ANC and, in conjunction with his two-year suspended sentence in May 2010, was suspended from the party for five years.. In 2011, he was also convicted of hate speech after calling for the murder of white people. On 4 February 2012 the appeal committee of the African National Congress announced that it found no reason to “vary” a decision of the disciplinary committee taken in 2011, but did find evidence in aggravation of circumstances, leading them to impose the harsher sentence of expulsion from the ANC. On April 25 2012 Malema lost an appeal to have his expulsion from the ANC overturned, as this exhausted his final appeal, his expulsion took immediate effect.

Riaan Cruywagen born on October 5, 1945 is a South African television news reader and voice artist who has been associated with the South African Broadcasting Corporation since its first television broadcasts in 1975.

In June 2003, following an outcry over reports that Cruywagen's contract with the SABC would not be renewed, an agreement between the SABC and UASA (United Association of South Africa) was reached. His contract was renewed and it was announced that he would continue with his duties for a period of time.

The name Riaan Cruywagen has become synonymous with Afrikaans television news through his lengthy career. In the mid-2000s, following the contract renewal issue, Cruywagen was once more the focus of popular culture in South Africa for a time, when a number of e-mail and internet jokes originally referring to Chuck Norris and David Hasselhoff were modified by using his name in their place. South African-themed jokes in a similar vein were also circulated, mostly related to his perennially youthful appearance and intellectual prowess.