COMMUNITY RADIO WILL NOT HAPPEN

We should not get too excited by news that the Swaziland Broadcasting Bill (2013) contains a provision for community radio stations to operate – it is not going to happen. 

 

The Bill sets out some general guidelines for how the stations might operate. It states that a community broadcasting service shall serve a community, and the members of that community that such community broadcasting service is intended to serve shall be given an opportunity to run the service. The programming provided by a community broadcasting service shall reflect the needs of the people in the community, which shall include culture, language and demographic needs.

The broadcaster shall provide distinct broadcasting service dealing specifically with issues which are not predominantly dealt with by the public broadcasting service covering the same area. The station shall serve to eradicate information poverty through participatory communication in the community as well as being informative, educational and entertaining. 

And that is why they will never get off the ground. The community radio stations would allow voices at present unheard in Swaziland to take to the airwaves, and that is something King Mswati III, who rules Swaziland as sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, does not want to happen.

Nearly all broadcasting in Swaziland is state controlled and the news and information that is given out by them is heavily censored. The only non-state controlled broadcasting – one radio station and one TV channel – censor themselves sufficiently that they are indistinguishable from the state controlled ones.

At present there are no community radio stations in Swaziland. Any attempts to set up community radio in Swaziland have been stalled by a government that says it is in support of such initiatives, but which fails to come up with the licences to let it happen.

If community radio stations were to launch and truly served the interests of their community they would challenge the present news media that is dominated by the needs of political, social and business elites in the kingdom.

The Bill might raise the optimism levels of people advocating for freedom of speech in Swaziland, but that optimism would be misplaced.

There has been little evidence since the Swazi Constitution was enacted in February 2006 that the kingdom is moving toward democracy. The news media are still unable to publish material critical of the monarchy and government ministers have sought to restrict the media’s access to information.

There is no such thing as a free press in Swaziland. There are at least 30 pieces of legislation that restricts the activities of the media in some way or another. Newspapers must be licensed by the government and any number of informal rules of conduct governs what can be talked about in the media and other public spaces.

There is no reason why the ruling elite in Swaziland would want to relax these laws and rules to allow more voices to be heard. The reason why they presently restrict the media is to control the flow of information and discussion. In this way members of the elite groups maintain their privileged positions.

A ‘community’ radio station should be a non-profit service that is owned and managed by the particular community the radio station serves. They are also different from the present commercial or state-controlled media in Swaziland because they allow a diversity of voices and opinions to be heard. This is because they are open to participation from all parts of the community.

Community radio can provide a platform for the discussion about matters that the community itself consider important. These issues might not be the same things that the monarch, the chiefs, or business houses think are important. And, because community radio allows dissenting voices to be heard people who presently have control in Swaziland will see it as dangerous.

The Bill is also unlikely to be enacted because the chiefs will not allow it.  In Swaziland the non-democratic nature of the kingdom requires people to defer to the wishes of local chiefs (who are in effect representatives of the monarch). If the chiefs do not support the community radio project, it will not happen. It really is as simple as that.

We have yet to see what position the chiefs take on the Bill but it is difficult to see that they would allow potentially subversive media into their areas. Instead, if they allowed the community radio into their chiefdoms at all they would want to have control over them. This would make it impossible to have truly ‘community’ radio. However, the idea of a ‘local’ radio, along the lines of the present national state-controlled SBIS that prominently reported the chiefs’ comings and goings (as the national radio does with the king) would probably be very attractive to them.

See also

THE CASE FOR COMMUNITY MEDIA

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2008/06/case-for-community-media.html

SWAZILAND NEEDS MORE MEDIA OUTLETS

http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2008/05/swaziland-needs-more-media-outlets.html

THE CASE FOR COMMUNITY MEDIA

Last month (May 2008) in response to the suggestions from some journalists in Swaziland that there was room for more newspapers and broadcasting outlets in the kingdom, I advocated community radio as one way forward.

I said that throughout the developing world small scale radio stations were giving people the opportunity to air their own concerns and hear their own voices broadcast.

Such radio stations are essentially democratic organisations that are owned and run by the same people who are the listeners.

A few people in Swaziland who had never heard of the concept of democratically-run radio before have asked me to say a bit more on the subject.

One great supporter of the concept is UNESCO. As part of this year’s World Press Freedom Day activities, UNESCO published a very good overview of community media, which I am reproducing here. You can find the original report here.


The role of community media

Even though many media outlets have made provisions for audience participation and have therein become more accessible to the people they serve, nowhere is accessibility and specificity of purpose so well defined as with community media. Currently radio is the most widespread form of community media in the developing world because it is cheap to produce and to access, can cover large areas, and overcomes illiteracy.

Community Media, Media with a mission Community radio defines itself more by its mission than its size or location. It usually evokes a grassroots attitude and a bias toward the free flow of opinions and ideas. It seeks to educate and entertain, to inform and amuse, and to create a big tent under which its listeners can engage and challenge each other as well as their political leadership.

These operations tend to be smaller, community based and managed, with a reliance on local support that may include advertising but more often is reflected in donations and volunteerism. Community media will often fill the void left by larger corporate media entities that operate under different imperatives that may not include the underrepresented or marginalized populations in a society. While not always the case, women and young people will find a home for their issues and encouragement of their participation within the community media framework.

The inclusion of women remains a challenging development issue because they are habitually excluded from the decision-making processes within their own societies, whilst being the first point of contact on many health and educational issues. Similarly, more attention should be given to the inclusion of youth within the media and to developing their media literacy skills.
Over the long-term, local media can create a coherent narrative of a region’s development and help people formulate goals and plans for how to improve their situation. The media can help contextualize national development programs within community frameworks and bring these goals closer to their intended beneficiaries.

Effective local media can also help people understand the history and evolution of oppression or discrimination and give them the necessary perspective to make rational choices to emerge from it. With this information, people have the means to participate in democratic processes and shape their own futures locally and nationally. Making every citizen a ‘reporter’ Professional journalists are the core of a reputable media environment. However, they are by no means the only ones actively chronicling the world around them. New technology is giving an unprecedented opportunity to citizens to inform others.

In crises, citizens reporting like journalists may be the only way for human rights abuses and other violations of a criminal or environmental nature to be brought to face broad public scrutiny. Citizen reporting may also be a way to work against censorship, following protests or political turmoil. If information becomes decentralized, censorship becomes less effective because it is no longer containable within the media outlets.

The practicalities of participation New technologies are not only changing the media dynamic when it comes to content, but are also a significant factor in creating new ways for media to interact with its audience.

Blogs, mobile phones and various other online devices are bringing the producers of content in closer contact with the consumers of it.

Feedback can be instantaneous. For the first time in the history of the media industry, especially in the most well developed media markets, there is as much information coming in from consumers as is going out to them through traditional and new means of communication. Managing these ebbs and flows of information is becoming increasingly critical to the future of the media business.

The bonds are being strengthened between these entities and with this deeper connection come heightened expectations that the users will be listened to. Encouraging participation is therefore key to the survival of media outlets in a competitive market place, while also providing an opportunity to engage with audiences. From an audience perspective, it means that it can influence the content in a very proactive way and it enables individuals to access a ready made platform through which they can share their opinions.

See also
SWAZILAND NEEDS MORE MEDIA OUTLETS