Early retirement for Anthony Duke

“I guess Ant feels the time is approaching to hang up his management headphones and relax,” said PCS radio portfolio GM Bob Mabena. “But his leaving the SABC will certainly mark the end of an era.”

Duke was instrumental in setting up South Africa's first independent radio station, Capital 604, in 1979, having studied at the National Broadcast School in London. In 1989, he was invited by the Dutch Government to represent the commercial radio sector in South Africa to start mapping out the future of radio in a post-Apartheid South Africa.

“In November 1995, I got a call from SABC Commercial Radio and asked to take over management at 5FM. I was there for eight years before moving to manage all radio training at the SABC in 2003,” recalled Duke.

Mabena added, “When the position of station manager at Good Hope FM came up in 2006, the SABC Group Executive Public Commercial Services, Pearl Luthuli, and I asked Anthony to go down to Cape Town to look after Good Hope FM in the short-to-medium term."
Apart from managing radio stations, Duke has represented the SABC in MAPPP-SETA related learning programmes and written radio learnerships, as well as helping to write the SABC Radio music policy. He represented SABC on local content representations to ICASA.

Duke, a Capetonian who had been away from the Mother City for 29 years, commented, “When I came down the station was experiencing some declines but we have managed to stabilise the station substantially over the last two years, with a 100 000 listener increase since then. I won't leave the noble profession of radio altogether and will be consulting, but it's going to be tough not going into work everyday... I guess a bit of extra golf will help with the pain!”