Statement: R2K says ICASA must do more before shutting down community radio stations!
24 October 2019
The Right2Know Campaign notes with great sadness the reports about the switching off of over 29 community radio stations. We again highlight our campaign on love your community radios. We highlight the silence of the minister of communications and MDDA on our call for an annual grant that could assist in keeping community radio stations open.
Community radio stations are important to upholding democratic values, ensuring community voices and communities be autonomous in running community radio stations is part of realising democratic values. We note with great concern this picking of community voices in media spaces and most notably the silencing of communities of pertinent issues.
We call on civil society as a whole and communities to stand against this evident silencing of community voices. The minister must account as to why the community radio stations have become the target, why community radio stations have become an option for saving money.
Community radio stations are integral to freedom of expression, free flow of media, diverse media and community voices. The issues that have been highlighted by ICASA as reasons to closing down these community radio stations are not adequate. The main crux of R2K’s Love Your Community radio campaign was a call for an annual grant call for community radio stations for greater sustainability.
Compliance is not easy for community radio stations, particularly for those located in rural areas with little to no support from ICASA and the MDDA. Some of the issues we located whilst communicating with community radio stations were the funds needed for the paperwork involved in being compliant, challenges reaching ICASA to receive clarity and guidance with tax issues and clearance, many community radio stations do not make enough to meet financial obligations and the funding if they receive it is used on basic things that are hardly enough to keep the radio stations open.
Many radio stations face the challenge of local politicians turning it into their own tool for political currency. These are the issues ICASA also needs to look into, before targeting these community radio stations. We reiterate the call for ICASA to increase the frequency of their interactions and training of Community Radio stations to assist them to be more compliant. ICASA must do more before they scrap these community radio stations, they must also release records on how many community radio stations they have assisted in being compliant in 2019 alone.
Issued by Busi Mtabane, Right2Know Communicator, 24 October 2019
