‘Mille Collines, the Rwandan radio station, can be held accountable for the killing of 800,000 people,’ said Jonathan Marks, who works for Radio Netherlands as a Creative Director, during a recent debate on community radio. All the participants agreed that community radio can be a quite dangerous medium. How can a station which aims at giving its own audience a voice be kept free from hate speech?

the constitution
Faiza Abrahams Smith, director of the South African National Community Radio Forum (NCRF), believes in the law. The degree to which her country’s fantastic Constitution has been actually implemented may be a bitter disappointment in her eyes, yet the Constitution serves as a touchstone against which controversial behaviour can be tested. Attentive listeners can take a radio station to court.

discrimination versus freedom of religion
A case in point is the young listener who protested against an islamic station’s refusal to grant broadcasting time to women. She raised the matter with the independent Broadcasting Authority’s gender department. It ruled that the station, Radio Islam, had acted improperly. Yet that wasn’t the end of the matter, as the radio station appealed to its constitutional freedom of worship and in its turn lodged a complaint against the gender department. It was a close shave, but in the end the voice of women had to be given access to the airwaves.

know your rights
Things can only be solved this way in a situation where people know their rights and have the courage to enforce them. Community radio should do its share in making this group bigger and bigger.

a waste of budget
Abrahams Smith: 'Take these billboards along the highway in South Africa, which are used to inform people that they may apply for a certain allowance. It takes quite a budget to rent advertising space aimed at people driving on highways – but these are not the ones who need that allowance! The ones who do will never see those billboards.'

identification
The people who never get to see these billboards: those are the ones community radio is meant for. Broadcasts are in the listeners’ vernacular and deal with issues of relevance to them. Information and identification are essential in a divided society such as South Africa.

blue-eyed blondes parading a stuck-up British accent
'Before apartheid was abolished official broadcasts were always presented by blue-eyed blondes parading a stuck-up British accent', said the NCRF director. 'There were two
languages: Afrikaans and English. For people with other backgrounds radio was a rather mysterious concept. They were being marginalised. Today we involve them in radio-making. We teach them how to make their own programmes, in their own languages, about their own topics. It gives them a voice, and what is more, it boosts their self-confidence.'

slaves as terrorists
Peggy Burke of Radio Mart, the Amsterdam-based Diaspora radio station for Dutch citizens originating in the Netherlands Antilles and Surinam, agreed with her: 'At school we were taught that runaway slaves were a kind of terrorists, but they were our heroes! Our history lessons were always dished up from a white point of view; now we have the opportunity to voice our own views.'

segregation
An objection was raised by the chairman of the panel, Habtom Yohannes, who works as an editor for the Dutch national radio channel 1, who wondered if such a specific orientation would not result in segregation.
Burke disagreed: 'If you live in a country whose mainstream media disregard the issues that are relevant to you, you are forced to create your own media. We address Surinamese and Antillean people who live in the Netherlands – we are talking about their lives here, not there. Indeed, we are trying to encourage people to turn their minds to their living in the Netherlands.'

psychological effect
Sometimes things go wrong, but reflecting on where you have come from will not necessarily make you ending up in an antagonistic position towards the other, will it? Radio Netherlands' Jonathan Marks told that his station goes about very cautiously. He works with countries that differ from the Netherlands or South Africa. Things went wrong in Rwanda, and they went wrong in Indonesia. Radio can have a strong psychological impact on listeners. It is a powerful means, and a dangerous one if fallen into the wrong hands.

political climate
In order to disseminate its own know-how, Marks’ company enters into co-productions together with radio stations in Africa, but it will never venture into areas in which the prevailing political climate is unfavourable. It will never just put up new stations, but only seek to co-operate with existing initiatives.
Why is it that Rwanda, with its millions of inhabitants, only has one radio station, a member of the public attending the debate wanted to know from Marks. The reply was inevitably rather disappointing: erecting an independent broadcasting station under the prying eyes of Kigali? The fact that the Rwandese fail to do that themselves probably speaks for itself...

Links
NCRF - www.ncrf.org.za
Radio Mart - www.radiomart.nl
Radio Netherlands - www.wereldomroep.nl

The Debate Media en Vrijheid (Media and Freedom) was organised by NiZA, NCDO in co-operation with SAHAN scientific counsultation bureau and De Balie. It took place at the 10th of June 2003, in De Balie in Amsterdam. The debate is part of the cyclus Shaping A New Africa , which intends to stimulate the debate on Africa. The results of the debates will be presented to the new Dutch minister of Development Co-operation as policy-recommendations.

Klaartje Jaspers works as a freelance journalist vanuit central and southern Africa. More information can be found at www.klaartjejaspers.com