Radio, Public Life and Citizen Deliberation in South Africa

Sarah Chiumbu, Gilbert Motsaathebe, Sarah Chiumbu, Gilbert Motsaathebe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367436339
• eBook ISBN: 9781000384451
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media & Communications Industry
• Index: Social Sciences

This book critically analyses the important role of radio in public life in post-apartheid South Africa.

As the most widespread and popular form of communication in the country, radio occupies an essential space in the deliberation and the construction of public opinion in South Africa. From just a few state-controlled stations during the apartheid era, there are now more than 100 radio stations, reaching vast swathes of the population and providing an important space for citizens to air their views and take part in significant socio-economic and political issues of the country. The various contributors to this book demonstrate that whilst print and television media often serve elite interests and audiences, the low cost and flexibility of radio has helped it to create a 'common' space for national dialogue and deliberation. The book also investigates the ways in which digital technologies have enhanced the consumption of radio and produced a sense of imagined community for citizens, including those in marginalised communities and rural areas.

This book will be of interest to researchers with an interest in media, politics and culture in South Africa specifically, as well as those with an interest in broadcast media more generally.

Part 1

Participation and citizen deliberation

1 The imaginary turns real

A review of South African radio listeners with reference to Ukhozi FM

Dumisani Sibiya and Innocentia J. Mhlambi

Introduction

This chapter discusses developments adopted by radio-listening communities in determining the nature of their social relations with the radio, specifically the Zulu-language-based public radio station Ukhozi FM, established during the early 1940s. What is being called into question behind these developments in the Ukhozi FM community’s radio-related life is the idea of a singular, one-dimensional communication system. While the engineering of radio programming is an unavoidable factor in modern states, with African audiences the agency of a listening community in determining the overall strategies of radio programming reveals itself to be a big part of establishing who is the presenter in the radio station and the extent to which the presenter builds rapport between the radio station and its listenership base, as well as other external (inter)national interested radio communities.

The idea that African audiences are highly interactive in that they determine the daily activities of their specific radio station has recently been tested in several protracted and highly publicised spats between the radio management and African audiences of specific radio stations. One case in point is the sacking of a popular kwaito artist and famous music producer, deejay (DJ) Sbu (aka Sibusiso Leope) and a television personality, Zama Nhlapho. Both presented Ukhozi FM breakfast shows and were forced to abandon the programme after the station as well as the print and social media platforms were inundated with complaints from the station’s listenership base (Mhlambi, Mjiyako, & Zungu 2019). Seemingly, these listeners, who belong to ordinary folks with their interconnections to other forms of social and political organisations, have drawn on the strengths of social arrangements within their local civic organisations to form not only an active audience for the radio but also a political avant-garde structure that proceeds from their created grassroots social composition. These organisational structures ensure that listeners speak with crystal clarity and from an informed collective position when challenging the radio management.

This chapter focuses on two case studies. The first involves Nhlekelele (his real name is Mjabuliseni Qwabe), who was first a listener and later became a presenter and celebrity at Ukhozi FM. The second case involves Owen Ndlovu, who was a sports commentator on Ukhozi FM and then turned businessman and introduced the Summer Song of the Year concept to the SABC which took the notion of audience participation to new heights. Following the active listening habits of Nhlekelele and Ndlovu, this chapter challenges the very principle of Anderson’s notion of ‘imagined communities’ regarding African radio communication systems and their listeners. African radio audiences are using traditional media and social media. Through SMSing (sending texted messages with mobile phones) and Twitterverse (using Twitter), Ukhozi FM listeners have introduced novel ways through which traditional radio and television transmission could expand its footprint and at the same time serving the radio listeners’ material interests, which also extend to local municipality-related programmes that use the spin-off to invest in tourism and leisure.

African-language radio listeners and their interests

In the study of early radio broadcasting in South Africa, Thokozani Mhlambi (2015) observes that pioneering isiZulu radio presenters, Mpanza, Dhlomo, and Masinga moulded the cultural and intellectual lives of their African listeners. These three presenters had varying temperaments in their interfacing with state agencies responsible for the introduction of an African-language radio service. The roles of these presenters interfaced with three essential tiers of control, which determine their positions within the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s (SABC) management and their relationship with the African publics. They interacted with the ministerial paternalistic directives which excluded them in the directions envisioned in the total structural engineering of radio broadcast; they interacted with their immediate managers who remained bosses by pulling strings and excluding them in bigger visions of the broadcast and their roles within that sphere; and they interacted with their audiences and publics, where their roles as presenters were also strained and ambiguously received.

Mpanza, the very first presenter of the radio station, had a two-fold relationship with the SABC, determined mainly by the white liberal attitudes that recommended him to the language service. His ambiguous position elicited multiple responses. On the one hand, he was viewed as participating in the dominant culture’s formation of ‘cultural zoos,’ an aspect which was increasing in all subjugated societies throughout the globe at the time. On the other hand, especially given the context of his other engagements with the activities of the Zulu Society established in 1936, he was seen as attempting to preserve aspects of the language and culture. The peremptory nature of the SABC’s relation with Mpanza as a presenter of war news and other programmes introduced pro-traditional sensibilities which, while in keeping with his language consciousness, were also troubling in its being appropriated by the segregationist government for controlling Africans (Mhlambi 2015: 66). These double-edged dialectics affected the moulding of future presenters and their audiences as can be seen with the critical responses of Dhlomo and the quiet tactical negotiations of Masinga.

Radio commentators shyly take up the dimension introduced by the African audiences’ highly complex soundscapes and communicative ecology (Slater & Tacchi 2004). Communicative ecology entails the complete classification of communication media types and information flows within the community. The introduction of African-language radio services were inserted into highly developed cultures of interactivity stemming from the oral world and its variant forms of oral discourse. The initial write-ins which started from Mpanza’s tenure (Mhlambi 2015) right up to the moment when Kansas City Mchunu used a combination of write-ins and phone-ins in the 1970s in his programme Zakhala Izingcingo (phones ring), are some of the indications that African audiences are attuned to the African-language radio services as a communication technology in which they can have a stake in the communicative act. Radio Zulu audiences in this programme and later ones such as Akesishiyelane (let’s share together), Ezawomama (women’s matters), and Jabul’Ujule (be happy and content), made relatively easier by the mobile phone culture, have seen them engaging in contemporary issues which situate African lived experiences across all sectors of the society. This redirected paths against traditional authorities relate to their subversive language when referring to the apartheid state, white and African forms of patriarchy, exclusion, marginalisation, and other forms of deprivations (Nkosi 2014).

Nonetheless, what remains to be understood is how these audiences can subtly infiltrate radio programming, being mostly conceived as a one-way form of communication. To this end, the work of Gunner (2019) on the participation of audiences in radio broadcasts is significant. She posits that the African radio medium also works within oral frames of reference on which these audiences base their interactivity. Her notion of the ‘migratory nature of orality’ refers to the entry point through which audiences stake a claim on a radio station which uses their language for communication, as the examples below will illustrate.

From poor listener to self-made celebrity and radio personality: The case of Nhlekelele

The success of interactivity between radio presenters and their audiences became a tradition, especially after 1994, since when some radio listeners have transcended their inherently imaginary existence and, instead, have become very popular as listeners, almost evolving into celebrities in their own right in the audio community. Since the advent of mobile phones and the resulting enhancement of the communicative ecology, Ukhozi FM radio station’s listeners have utilised these devices to turn their imaginary existence into real existence by making regular calls to the radio station. This audio community of regular callers comprises more than a handful of personalities who started as ordinary callers and who were imaginary at least from the radio station’s perspective. Frequent callers who turned into radio personalities in Ukhozi FM are Nhlekelele, Kutuza, Mzonjani, Bhojasi (late), City Ximba, Sipho Ndima, Jazi, Mandla Zulu (‘Boyfriend’), Bongani Miya, Melusi Zindela, Mathuli Thuli Nkwanyana, and others. Notably, these personalities made regular calls, at least once in every programme, from the breakfast show through to the mid-morning, lunch, and afternoon shows, until the night shows. With the radio station boasting a listenership of nearly 8 million listeners, thousands have since complained about this situation, as they find it extremely difficult to have their calls picked up by the radio station. However, the above-mentioned personalities seem to have found a way of making those calls and have succeeded over the years.

Perhaps what has made these callers popular and their voices and names linger in the minds of other listeners is not only the regularity of their communication with the station but also their tendency to emulate the radio presenters. They do this by having their signature catchphrases whenever they are on air. In other words, radio presenters serve as these listeners’ role models, and their interaction becomes somewhat self-reflecting on the part of both the presenter and listener. For example, Bongani Miya will say his name and surname and where he comes from – that is, Ezakheni Township in Ladysmith. His signature is unchanged each time he calls, before airing his comments on the issues of the day in that particular programme.

Another example is that of Jazi. Most radio presenters recognise his voice, and when he goes on air, he will introduce himself in this fashion: ‘Ukhuluma noJazi, eDumbe, eMangosuthu eMasimini’ (You’re talking to Jazi, in Dumbe, at Mangosuthu area at Masimini village). As he bids goodbye, he has another catchphrase: ‘Hhelahhela!’ This term does really have any meaning other than an exclamation of happiness. Nhlekelele (a nickname, meaning ‘disaster’), also has a popular catchphrase with which he greets the audio community humorously: ‘NguNhlekelele, udomethi, umasaka, into engafundile, i-principal yasehostela’ (It’s Nhlekelele, the doormat, the useless one, the uneducated thing, the hostel’s principal). These words sound more like self-created praise names than real names, and the intention is to amuse the listeners because there are no principals at the hostels. Oral art forms naturally find ways to express themselves thr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Introduction From subject to citizen: Building active citizenship through radio in South Africa
• PART 1: Participation and citizen deliberation
• PART 2: Identity, religion and culture
• PART 3: Radio and digital technologies
• PART 4: Political economy
• Index