Dedicated to providing the people of Alexandra with hard-hitting local news, ALX.FM is proving that interactive radio is what people want. Itumeleng oa Mahabane reports
RAP star and erstwhile self-proclaimed hip-hop thugster Tupac Shakur hangs placidly from a wall in the studio booth at ALX.FM. The poster carries the title of his latest album, Me Against the World. The words reflect the attitude of some of the staffers at this Alexandra station. There’s almost a swaggering confidence about them – perhaps borne of a determination to succeed as a fully fledged operation instead of just another community radio station. Or perhaps the attitude is influenced by the more experienced confidence of station manager Pascal Damoyi, a journalist since the late 1980s.
Current affairs producer and presenter Buras Nhlabati and education show host Phanuel Mashuna reflect that feeling. Both are scornful of the interview; it does not probe deep enough. To these folks, real news must be extracted from an unwilling, uncomplying source.
“You must get the person into a corner. Real news must be forced out,” Nhlabati explains. “Yesterday someone wanted to pull a gun on me.” “Why?” I naively ask. “Because I put him in a corner; made him frustrated and angry.”
With that perception of what journalism ought to be and his aptitude for undercover work, he might do well to join an media investigative unit and “make a difference”.
The station broadcasts local, national and important international news. For local news, Nhlabati and a couple of volunteers gather news by visiting clinics, going to the local police station and generally interacting with members of the community.
On this morning, a local businessman comes in to give Nhlabati the details of a robbery. Before leaving, he appeals to Nhlabati to ask witnesses to come forward.
National and international news is picked up from other media, and the news team also reads pertinent stories from the morning papers. The volunteers were given a course in news gathering by a American media educator, Phillys Crockett, and training in writing is handled by Nhlabati. Joseph Kaasi, a volunteer at the station, hopes that he will eventually get to be a news reader and perhaps even get his own show one day.
You can pick up the Current Affairs show six days a week from 5.30am to 7.30am. It’s not the best scheduling for a show that Damoyi says is the heart of what ALX.FM is about – “Empowering the Community”, as their signpost on the corner of First Avenue reads.
Nhlabati says they normally spend the first hour reviewing the events of the previous day, as most guests cannot make it that early in the morning. Then at 6.30am they get to the nitty gritty. Like most of their shows, it is interactive – interviews with guests, discussions, then opening the telephone lines. The show is interrupted at 7.05am by a news bulletin and then resumes until 8.25am.
Their frequency, on 89.1FM, has a radius of about 40 kilometres. The signal can still be picked up quite clearly even south of Rosebank, although there it might be better to move your dial to 89.5FM.
The joy of community radio is that it is – to use that clich – grassroots. The people of ALX.FM live in Alex, interact with Alex and hence get instant feedback from their listeners. Philondra Nyathi, for instance, hosts a woman’s show from 8.30am to 10.30am. She did a show on divorce and its effects after women in Alex approached her. Of course it is not always a good thing to be accessible. When a burly man knocked on her door and accused her of corrupting his wife, who was apparently becoming vocal about her rights, it could have turned nasty. As it was, she stood her ground and the incident came to naught.
The accessibility of guests to the station is also appreciated. The station is based at the Alexandra Resources Center which is really a community center that also houses an number of other organisations, including Eskom. The waiting room outside the broadcast booth is open to anyone. On this particular day an elderly gentleman is slumped on a chair, his head on the table, apparently trying to sleep out his insobriety. Next to him is a young girl staring either at the glass barrier or at Sechaba Ramalepa, whose arts and cultural programme is now being broadcast.
Dorothy Masuka’s voice fills the booth, sounding uncannily like Miriam Makeba when she was with the Skylarks. Arts and Culture Alive, slotted between 4.30pm and 6.30pm, must either be a refreshing break or infuriatingly draconian for the youth of Alex. When most stations are playing imported run-of-the-mill pop tunes they can chill or groove to, Ramalepa feeds them a strict staple of African rhythms and roots.
At 4pm a burly traffic officer leans into the mike and introduces himself as “Patrick Jaca with the traffic report”. It’s done in Setswana with English insertions. ALX.FM could well be the only true multilingual station in the country as most of the programmes are done in Nguni and Sotho languages with some English.
Ramalepa thanks Jaca (pronouncing it Jakka) for the report. “It’s ‘Jaaa’,” the officer retorts. “Don’t pronounce it like an Afrikaner, you should know it by now.” A brief session on pronunciation ensues.
Jonas Gwangwa’s trombone fill the room. The CDs Ramalepa plays are his own; it’s a struggle to get the record companies to send their new releases. There’s a tendency for record companies to look down on community radio, he says. “They recognise it’s a non-profit idea and feel they can get more from commercial radio.”
He doesn’t play as much music from the north as he would like to, but there is a show on Sunday from 7pm to 8pm called Beyond the Limpopo, which showcases, as the name suggest, music from north of the Limpopo river. He also dedicates time, at least once a week, to bands that are strictly from Alex.
The station came into being in August this year with funds from the Netherlands and Australian embassies, with intentions to become self- sufficient. But so far, they are simply not getting enough advertising. Alex business people who have had their enterprises for years and have seen customers walk through their doors regularly, don’t believe they need to advertise.
Outside the booth, another young girl joins the sodden gentleman sleeping on the table. “Our philosophy is that guests should be accessible to people, and when they leave, we hope they take time to speak to the visitors,” Ramalepa says. “I might stand corrected, but I think we were the only station to interview Ice Cube. At some point during the interview Danny Glover arrived. It was a lot of fun and outside the studio it had never been so full.”
Back in the office, it’s 6.30pm and there are only a few people left. Matif Still is trying to fax a document for Damoyi. Before he joined ALX, Still was in the marketing business. Now he applies his knowledge as the presenter of Business Chat, covering small business initiatives, consumer rights and investment advice. Two weeks ago he had someone in from the Gold Coin Advisory to talk about investing in Krugerrands. Last Friday it was Traditional Beer Investments, a division of South African Breweries.
A memo stuck to the wall near the fax machine stipulates conditions under which absences from work are justifiable – or not. Illness is no excuse; if you can get to the doctor to get a certificate then you can get to work. Neither is death, except your own – and then two weeks’ notice is required.
l ALX.FM broadcasts begin at 5.30am with Headline News, followed by Current Affairs. 8.30am to 11.30am it’s Philondra Nyathi’s Women’s Affairs.11.30am to 1pm is Matif Stills’s Business Chat, followed by Priscilla Nalana’s Youth Show. 2.30pm to 3.30pm is Phanuel Shuma’s Education Series and Sechaba Ramalepa’s Arts and Culture Alive runs from 4.30pm to 6.05pm. From 18.30 to 21.00 is Stimela Maweza’s Community Development Show.