Institutional Review of Educational Radio Dramas: Case Study 10: South Africa (Soul City)

Case Study 10: South Africa - Soul City

Founded in 1992, the first Soul City series was a 13-part television drama and a 60-part radio drama in Zulu, Sotho and Xhosa called Healing Hearts. Its primary aim was to change health behavior among the African and Colored population, particularly on maternal and child health, tobacco, HIV/AIDS, TB and hypertension. Other issues were land distribution, violence against women, and personal finance. Soul City has expanded enormously and is now in its fifth series, with nine national languages. It is a multi-media project, with print, educational and advocacy materials backing up the radio and television series.

Soul City is the fictional rural township in which drama takes place. The stories are about people's everyday lives, struggles and conflicts, set in and around the clinic. The 15-minute radio drama follows a similar storyline to that of the television series and is broadcast by nine different regional radio stations, each covering a different language. The storyline is the same across the nine regions, but settings and character names are typical of the different regions.

Soul City has become something of a beacon in the world of entertainment-education and is now expanding to eight other African countries. Its success is due in part to the strong founding and management team and South Africa's high existing skill levels in mass-media, advertising and marketing, and high radio and television ownership. Radio drama is just one of several multi-media approaches. Its strong emphasis on rigorous formative research and evaluations, which are then well publicized, ensures continuing interest from audiences on the one hand and funders/backers on the other.

Management: Soul City is mostly a research and management organization. Its employees do not directly produce, direct or publish its health communication materials. It commissions them from professionals.

Writing and Production: Content is decided by Soul City in consultation with the Department of Health and other stakeholders. Research is then commissioned to help identify the specific issues of focus and what the audience knows and believes about the topic. Experts take the findings from the formative research and define the drama's messages in the form of a message brief. The series manager at Soul City commissions a team of scriptwriters, who are briefed in a workshop about how best to integrate the messages into the drama and they produce a draft outline. This is tested with the experts, role players and members of the target audience, after which full scripts are produced. All scripts are pre-tested with stakeholders and the target audience to make sure the messages have been well integrated and yet maintain their entertainment value. Scripts are translated and recorded by the nine regional radio stations at no cost.

Formative Research and Audience Feedback: Formative research consists of consultations with the target audience about what they know, their concerns and their points of resistance, through personal interviews and focus groups. Scriptwriters spend days visiting townships and clinics, and then meet with experts on the content and nature of the messages. After the drama is produced and broadcast, there is an evaluation and lessons learned are integrated into future productions.

Supporting Activities: Soul City produces a weekly television drama in nine different languages, a comic book in two languages as inserts in 10 newspapers, and a website to fill in the storyline for people who have missed an episode. Newspapers provide free space for the comic books. Soul City has produced 2.25 million health education booklets featuring the television characters and education packets for adults and youth. Adult packets include the health booklet, comic books based on the storyline, audiotapes of the comic books, Soul City posters and a facilitator's guide. The youth packets consist of a comic book based on the television series, four workbooks that address personal responsibility, and a facilitators' guide for use in high schools and by NGOs. Soul City's name is attached to activities such as the Health and Development Worker of the Year Competition, which lends glamour, popularity and credibility to the competition.

In 2000, Soul Buddyz was begun, a multi-media edu-tainment vehicle aimed at children between 8 and 12 years. This has both a radio and a television element, and deals with a range of issues, including HIV/AIDS, disability, bullying, abuse, road awareness, burns and drowning. Each 30-minute program consists of a short 10-minute drama with child protagonists, five minutes of documentary information inserts for both adults and children, and 15 minutes of interactive talk. Soul Buddyz is in four languages, Xhosa, Sepedi, Setswana and English.

Sustainability: At present there are no signs that Soul City will come to an end. As long as it is producing a top class product, ensuring that both donors and audience remain interested, there is nothing to prevent them going on for many years to come. Soul City's ongoing nature means that various other health and development groups can piggyback onto the soap with their own issues, without re-inventing the wheel as far as research and production is concerned. This avoids the problem of audience lag, the time taken to build a sizeable and dedicated audience for a new media program.