Beginning life as a suggestion of the Task Group on Government Communications (Comtask) in 1996, the Media Development and Diversity Agency (MDDA) has inspired its share of cynical comment — and not just because it took more than seven years for Comtask’s idea to be implemented. The cynics have another argument: there have been similar initiatives in the past, and they have failed.
Depending on how one defines it, the MDDA is the third public organisation set up in the last decade to tackle the related problems of limited access to media choice and high barriers to entrepreneurial entry in South Africa’s rural and underdeveloped areas.
The early 1990s saw the formation of the Independent Media Diversity Trust and Print Media South Africa set up its Print Development Unit in 2000, the aims of both being to promote media diversity in historically disadvantaged communities.
These early organisations, as the Rhodes Journalism Review put it, “were [not] as successful as they would have liked to have been due to the voluntary nature of the funding and the fact that foreign donors have gradually been pulling out of South African media projects since the demise of apartheid”.
But a critical difference between the MDDA and its predecessors is supposed to be that it is a function of parliamentary legislation, which means that funding is not voluntary.
The agency’s resources are drawn from a partnership between the government and private media companies including Johncom, Caxton, Media24 and Independent Newspapers, and this fact alone would seem to place it in a new class.
According to MDDA board chairperson Kanyisiwe Mkonza, speaking after the nine-member board was announced in January 2003, “for the next five years the private sector will contribute R10-million a year while the Government Communication and Information System will contribute R7-million”. So, having finally cut through the bureaucratic delays, the first grants from these funds were awarded in February this year.
The MDDA board announced an “in-principle” decision to support 11 projects, among them two commercial print operations, six community radio projects, a community newspaper and a non-governmental organisation. Asked by Media Weekly what conditions are implied by the “in principle” proviso, MDDA CEO Libby Lloyd said: “Some have applied for huge grants. We are working with them on their models to establish whether there is the potential for return. We need to see proper planning, three-year projections and research into the particular market’s needs. It needs to be real, not cuckoo land. Everyone believes they have potential.”
Given that commercial sustainability has been another big concern of the MDDA’s critics, Lloyd’s response indicates that the board is being prudent about those projects that may not cope with the rigours of the free market once the capital injections dry up. That said, return on investment is clearly not the purpose of the MDDA Act.
“Our Act also recognises there are some entities that will never be commercially sustainable, now or in the future,” says Lloyd.
“For example, if you’re a local newspaper in a tiny village with one shop, you’ll never get to profitability. But you may have 100% reach in your target audience. We need to account for that.”
Although the MDDA is not revealing the names of the 11 earmarked projects yet, Lloyd provides some background details that reflect the above stipulations. The community newspaper, she says, is not without competitors in its target area, but provides training on newspaper production for a rotating staff made up of schoolchildren. Also, the two commercial newspapers are aimed at villages and towns outside the major metropolitan areas, and one has a national reach.
Decisions on a further eight projects have been postponed, and more funds have been made available for the financial cycle starting this month. Thus far 29 organisations have applied for support from the MDDA, with funding requests totalling R30-million — far more than the R5-million available in the first financial cycle (funds are disbursed in four cycles a year).
So with the MDDA’s requests for support far outrunning its funds, Lloyd is explicit on how decisions are made.
“If you have to choose between two applicants that meet many of the criteria equally, according to the Act you prioritise rural areas, indigenous languages, and those that can show that no other media meets the target audience’s needs.
“The ideal is that everyone in South Africa has a choice of media. In some areas we’re worried that there’s no access to any media at all, and we’ve embarked on a research project to determine what percentage is unable to receive even an SABC signal.”
Of course the solitary SABC signal, if available, does not spell diversity. Media choice for all may be the idyllic scenario, but for now the MDDA would do its reputation the world of good by funding some brands that could take on the market, a few torchbearers that could truly differentiate this initiative from its predecessors.
Judging by her following reference, Lloyd gets the point: “In the 1980s a lot of alternative newspapers and magazines closed when the funding stopped.
“The MDDA has the same problem. If we just keep giving grants, it doesn’t solve anything.”
Kevin Bloom is editor of The Media magazine