By Sue McCauley
I recently had the opportunity to go to South Africa to teach a community radio station management course at the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism (IAJ) in Johannesburg. The institute is run by Alister Sparks, a self-proclaimed "foot soldier of the revolution", author, journalist and political commentator.
This visit proved to be a fascinating experience as I was plunged into the election environment and had a chance to see at first hand the enormous changes in the media (not to mention the rest of society) that were beginning to occur. The students came from new stations in urban environments such as the black township of Soweto and rural areas such as the huge desert region of the Karoo.
The group that had come to the IAJ to find out how to set up a community radio station were all aware that they had a lot to learn in a short time. The issuing of the first community radio station licences by the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) should take place before the end of July.
The students were on a steep learning curve, as many had little management or radio experience. All were eager to grab the opportunity and worked very hard to come to grips with understanding the philosophy behind community radio and how this theory might be translated to meet the particular needs in their community for media, especially radio.
In the previous white regime, the media were tightly controlled. The megalithic state-run South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) was almost openly the official organ of the state. The SABC ran television and radio services targeted at various ethnic groups. Eighty per cent of its revenue came from advertising. Its outlook was one of serving the interests of the state and the advertisers.
Television news coverage was provided in English and Afrikaans on alternate nights. The level of journalism was poor, as was the technical and production quality. M-NET, a pay television satellite service, competed for audience with the SABC.
Community radio was banned. Bush Radio in Cape Town had its transmitters seized by the state after four hours of broadcasting illegally in the middle of 1993.
I had the opportunity to travel around South Africa for a few weeks, spending time with people from community stations to assist them to write their licence applications and advise them on management matters.
The communities' needs in these areas were quite different from each other. Voice of Soweto needed to know how to put together a marketing proposal to the Standard Bank, while the people in the remote regions of the Karoo wanted me to talk to small community groups about what community radio is.
While in the Karoo I spent two days and 1200 kilometres driving from one small town to the next one. I was with Olwyn Wessells, who called herself a "motivator" of community radio in the region. I spoke at community meetings to people who wished to know more about starting community radio.
Olwyn and the committees saw the radio station as a network of far-flung production groups, making programs to be broadcast in the whole region via a central station. The broadcasting area was a quarter of South Africa. However, I am sure they will do it. People seemed very determined to use the airwaves to link the communities and provide information and education services that do not exist at the moment.
Bush radio will be one be one of the first community radio stations to gain a licence and "go legal" as a broadcaster in the next few weeks, a major triumph in the revolution taking place in the media of South Africa.
The media have been targeted as a key area to assist in the creation of a democracy. Australia is providing millions of dollars in aid to reshape the SABC as a democratic and responsive organisation.
Willie Currie, a broadcasting consultant who was involved in drafting the legislation to set up the IBA, proposed in the new publication Media and Broadcasting Matters that the whole labyrinthine organisation needed to be completely restructured.
He believes that a totally new public broadcaster with a different mind set should be created, funded by the government rather than advertising. Reform on the scale required in the SABC will be very difficult to achieve. He says, "A restructured Public Broadcasting Service will have to be much more responsive to the public as citizens of a non-racial democracy as opposed to the paternalistic and authoritarian attitude of the SABC that was created like Dr Frankenstein's monster under Apartheid".
This view is supported by many. It will be interesting indeed to see how the new minister for post and communications, Pallo Jordan, handles this difficult but essential process of drastic change.
Australia is also supporting an aid project for community radio which will be run by Public Radio News over a year. PRN general manager Tony Douglas and international consultant Tracey Naughton were in South Africa in June to plan the project. It will provide training and management advice to the sector through working with individual stations and the Community Radio Forum.
In a developing country like South Africa, the poor people may well not be able to read or have access to newspapers or television. Even in the poorest houses, however, there is usually a radio.
[Sue McCauley is training manager of PRN.]