There are 98 community radio stations now on air in South Africa, reaching an estimated 3.2 million people. They provide an important function, giving information to local communities and often remote settlements. The government wants to offer more licenses but many existing stations are finding it difficult to produce quality programmes with very limited budgets.
"In many ways community stations are fulfilling a public mandate without the benefit of license fees or government subsidy like the public stations. They're really batting with their hands tied behind their back."
Poverty Reduction
John van Zyl is Director of ABC Ulwazi, a non-governmental organisation devoted to training and educational production for radio. They're trying to help local stations do more – bring money to their community and try to reduce poverty levels in the area.
"One way is to make them into multipurpose community centres. The broadcasting aspect is only one part of it and you can use all of the advantages to having a radio station at your disposal - reaching a lot of people, cheaply and effectively and with a great deal of loyalty, the sense of ownership that community stations have."
Sustaining Tourism
But obviously more is needed than just community involvement. One of ABC Ulwazi's training and information projects links up with a government push to encourage tourism, both locally and from abroad. The idea is something called "community based sustainable tourism"
"We ask the stations to look around and see what sort of cultural capital they have in the area. What do people do? Do they sculpt? Do they make music? Is there a heritage site nearby? That's the easiest. Every place has a history. It might be lost but it can be rediscovered and someone there will have a story to tell about that hill, tree or whatever."
Promotion
Continuing the folk lore theme, ABC Ulwazi encourage communities to run their own festivals based on local traditions and events such as harvest time, treading the first grape of the year or catching of the first fish. "Every time there's a festival," says van Zyl, "people will come to set up stalls or tell stories or perform." The community stations can use this to help promote the idea of community based sustainable tourism.
"We're making programs about examples of festivals, cultural capital and then distributing them to the local community stations. But first we invite them to our training centre in Johannesburg for 5 days. We play them the programmes and say: this is the idea, how can you localise it? We make the programmes, train the producers and they go away with the ready-made programmes. Hopefully those will then generate phone-ins, discussions and news items. And, even more hopefully, they will generate income because the local festival or shop will generate income for that particular community."
Opportunity
The forerunner of this project was another radio idea intended to generate income both for community stations and for their listeners.
"We had a 6-part series where we worked with a partner, a smalll business development organisation and they introduced us to six people who had absolutely nothing and had managed to make a success of their business. There was a lady in a factory making shirts, who realised every shirt has a little loop at the back to hang it up. That is a specialised function and she started making those. She set up her own business and now she has four or five people working for her."
|
Has it been a success? "Absolutely brilliant. People have been phoning in saying: I've always wanted to be a contractor and now I know I can do it. So immediately there's income generation and information that's useful to that particular community."
jd/11/00
|
|
|
|
Tags: ABC Ulwazi, John van Zyl, radio, South Africa