The tussle between the IBA and Voice of Soweto could end in a bruising court battle, write Ferial Haffajee and Maria McCloy
The Voice of Soweto radio station will seek an interdict to prevent the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) from hauling it off the air in ten days’ time.
“The IBA has given us no formal written reasons for its decision to refuse our licence application,” said Mpumi Dakile, the station’s chief executive officer, this week. He runs one of the country’s largest and oldest community stations; until recently vaunted as a model for community radio.
Instead all it received last month was a 13 line letter from the authority informing it of the decision and warning ” Voice of Soweto is ordered by the Authority to cease broadcasting as from 19 January at 12h00 noon”.
IBA councillor Libby Lloyd says they hope to give the station a written response by the end of the week.
The authority’s decision follows a warning to the station last September when its management was asked to rectify the station’s apparent straying from its licence conditions.
Some in the industry thought the station was going too commercial with top brands paying to sell their wares to its audience while the IBA watchdogs complained about its financial statements, an appointed (as opposed to elected) board, a lack of community participation in the station and the fact that the station broadcasts not from Soweto but from the centre of Johannesburg.
The IBA’s chair, Felleng Sekha, said this week: “There wasn’t enough community participation and that encourages a tendency to become commercial.”
Dakile claims it moved fast to comply, calling an annual general meeting of the community where a new board could be elected. Only 14 people turned up despite an ad in the Sowetan newspaper, hand-bills and extensive advertising on the station.
“There’s apathy about meetings,” says Dakile, adding, “It’s about Soweto and the mindset. When we had a music festival last year, we pulled 30 000 people when we advertised for four days.” He sees no problem with the station’s location and claims that it is easier and cheaper for listeners to travel to the city than to get from one point to another in Soweto.
The new board of directors for the station was appointed from those present at the meeting — a factor which irked the IBA. Lloyd says: “When we reconsidered their application, they had not done any of it [met the conditions]. The meeting was not quorate.”
The Voice of Soweto presents the IBA with something of a conundrum.
Successful beyond many commercial broadcasters’ dreams, Dakile claims the two-year-old station which employs 36 young radio people will break even in April (it normally takes about three years for new stations to make a profit).
He boasts ad revenue of R2,5-million booked till the end of March with the big guns like Coca Cola, Nandos, MTN and McDonalds buying airtime. Naturally it is worried that the talk of closure will scare away advertisers.
Its core audience is young (mostly between 15 and 25 years old) and lives in Soweto, so advertisers have been queuing up. So have donors.
The debonair Dakile has managed to coax sought-after training contracts and other resources out of both Radio France International and the BBC.
But for the authority, community stations are meant to cater for entire communities and should be less flashy and commercial sounding than the Voice of Soweto (which applied unsuccessfully last year for a commercial licence). Regulations set up to govern the granting of community licences are strict: they speak of community ownership, they envisage the community controlling programming and financing the station.
This has happened with success in some rural areas, but the case of the Voice of Soweto shows how cleavages in community radio will develop as stations develop different identities, compete in different environments and attract very diverse audiences.
Dakile says staff at the station are not volunteers and need to be paid as many are breadwinners, and that Voice of Soweto still has debts of R300 000 to pay: “The IBA doesn’t have a clue. We have to develop our own kind of community radio here and we’re doing that. We have to be self- sustaining yet we mustn’t steer away from being community-driven.” Something which Dakile claims they are. The station says it was one of the first to promote kwaito music and provides programming on education, health, career guidance and legal matters.
“We have not had a single complaint from our target community,” says Dakile, who also complains that the IBA has spoken out on the reasons for the pending shut-down of his station to the media, but has refused to comment to the Voice of Soweto.
A number of new people working in local radio got their first break at Voice, yet some feel that several of the problems facing the station in fact lie with Dakile.
One former staffer commented: “It’s not Voice of Soweto that’s wrong, it’s the management that’s a problem, I don’t know why they [the IBA] can’t see that the problem is management, and the only person managing is Mpumi, the board is powerless, he makes the decisions that matter alone.”
The somewhat opinionated chief executive officer has rubbed many industry players up the wrong way. With the gift of the gab and a taste for the good life, he regularly travels to France to cement relations with donors. Dakile counters accusations of autocracy and cronyism — some claim that the board is made up of his pals — by pointing out that most board members are from community organisations and are not his friends. “I could never run this place alone,” he says.
Alexandre de Clermont Tonnere, a French funder who used to handle many of the affairs between Voice Of Soweto and the French Embassy, described it as “one of the most professional and successful community stations in the country”. He said the French Embassy had pumped significant human and financial resources into the station.
“Its closure would be sad as well as a waste of time and money.” He also noted that when the French airwaves were opened in 1981 many commercial stations folded because of lack of financial back-up: “Some people think community radio in essence should be struggling, not self-sufficient or making money.”
Lloyd says its not the end of the line for the station which she says is welcome to apply for the four-year community station licences the IBA will shortly start considering.