‘A first class broadcaster with something to say’: Nontando Jabavu, the BBC, and the cultural politics of African broadcasting in post-war Britain

Abstract This article examines the South African intellectual Nontando Jabavu’s broadcasting career at the BBC and how she established herself as an authoritative and accessible voice on race relations, African affairs, and culture as a roving freelance broadcaster for the Corporation. Jabavu came from a renowned family with deep roots in education and journalism, and with extensive connections with the rapidly eroding world of Cape liberalism in the Union of South Africa. This article argues that Jabavu’s BBC programmes marked her as a burgeoning Black intellectual thinker and a consummate transnational mediator of African affairs and diasporic cultural practice for the Corporation in the post-war years. It shows how she played a leading role in challenging prevailing perceptions about race and empire, with her broadcasts not only anticipating but contributing to broader shifts in British attitudes about racial inequality and imperial legacies. By foregrounding a voice situated within elite cultural institutions while persistently challenging the racial and imperial foundations that governed them, this article advances a broader reframing of Black British intellectual history and contributes to emerging scholarship that re-evaluates the BBC’s entanglements with empire and the role of colonial African intellectuals and broadcasters in shaping post-war British culture.