Radio drama as a tool for activism in South Africa: The case of Plague in the Time of King Kapital and Queen Corona

Abstract

How can sound be utilized as a tool for political conscientization? COVID-19 has disrupted face-to-face organizing tactics for progressive movements globally, making it necessary to branch out to more mediated forms of grassroots political organizing. In this article, we explore how sound might be employed to invoke an imagined working-class community across ethnic, gender and generational divides against a backdrop of crisis and corruption on the structural level. Through a close listening of a South African radio drama, Plague in the Time of King Kapital and Queen Corona (KKQC), we find that the use of sound enables a worldmaking that is both attuned to structural inequities and imagines a utopian, solidaristic working-class community. KKQC offers a case of worldbuilding and political conscientization through radio drama that is relevant to understanding the possibilities of the genre in the contemporary South African context.