New radio stations in Mozambique speak of more than mere party ideology, writes Peta Thornycroft
Mozambique is enjoying a boom of new radio stations where the freeing of the airwaves has been an audible peacetime dividend.
There are now five new radio stations in Mozambique which, prior to elections three years ago, had only one official radio voice and it belonged to the ruling party, Frelimo.
Not surprisingly, during those years, Radio Mozambique was obsessed with the story of the war.
All that’s now changed, according to Radio Mozambique’s Marcos Muledzera, who is head of international relations. Democracy and competition have forced the public broadcaster to become the voice of all of the people and not just that of the ruling party.
Muledzera was attending last week’s Southern African Broadcasting Association meeting sponsored by German radio, Deutsche Welle, in Cologne.
Says Muledzera: ”The new stations are popular. They are struggling to get going, but now they have some advertising. In Radio Mozambique we have to watch out. We had it all our own way for decades.”
And Renamo, the main opposition party, still operates its own station, Radio Verde, using a transmitter donated by right wing sympathisers in Bavaria. ”They [Renamo] still don’t trust Radio Mozambique,” Muledzera said.
Since Radio Mozambique began its transformation process it has cut much of its Portuguese programming, upping its use of indigenous languages. ”The war devastated education, so many people are illiterate. The kind of Portuguese we used on Radio Mozambique was the speech of the elite. Ordinary people struggled to understand it.”
And if SABC is groaning about trying to broadcast in 11 official languages then it should look with sympathy at its much poorer neighbour. Radio Mozambique is broadcasting in 18 languages including Portuguese and English from nine regional stations. And its equipment, from transmitters to tape recorders, is on its last legs.
Because Mozambique’s infrastructure was targeted for destruction by Renamo, no one knows how many people have radios. ”Maybe one or two million, that’s the last time we had any statistics . in the early 1980s, but I think it’s much more than that, and we have to have many more listeners in future. We will get more listeners by broadcasting in indigenous languages.”
Mozambique’s public broadcaster employs about 700 people, and has a mandate to serve the public right across that vast country from the Tanzanian border in the north to the village, Zitondo, in the far south.
Muledzera, who went into exile to escape the war more than 15 years ago, helped set up the Portuguese service for Deutsche Welle.
He returned home last year. ”At the moment we are dependent on the government for 70% of our funding and the balance comes from advertising. Now we have to reverse that and bring in the majority of the funds ourselves. It’s going to be tough.”
But just as SABC has its cash cows, Radio 5 and Metro, so there is Radio Cidade in Maputo, a music station for the capital.