Community Radio Campaign

Lobbying around the establishment of a viable, diverse and independent community media sector.

Research and lobbying work around community radio is undertaken in partnership with the National Community Radio Forum (NCRF), which is a relationship regulated by a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). The MoU is based on the recognition that the community radio sector is crucial to the realisation of freedom of expression, and therefore both organisations have an overlapping interest in the state of health of the sector. Apart from collaboration around the Policy Unit, the MoU notes that  'the partnership will also address any other obstacles the community media sector experiences in ensuring the rights to free expression and access to information are realised'.

One activity in this respect involves lobbying to ensure that the regulator, the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) speeds up the process of licensing community radio. This process has been dragging for some years due to lack of capacity in the regulator to handle the workload. This is a long-standing area of activity that now seems to be yielding some fruits, although the licensing process has still not been completed.

In anticipation of the completion of the process, the FXI and NCRF (through the Policy Unit) are reviewing the whole process, which will be fed into an enquiry ICASA is obliged to carry out before it can advertise for application once again. The review will be conducted by the community media policy research unit. The FXI aims to utilise research from the Community Media Policy Unit to lobby for a more effective licensing regime for community radio to ensure that this problem is dealt with and does not keep repeating itself to the long-term detriment of community radio.

In addition, the FXI and the NCRF will continue to engage with Icasa on the opening up of licensing for those community radio stations that missed the 1997/1998 deadlines for applications, or that have emerged since these deadlines passed. The two organisations will also identify priority areas in the country where services are lacking, and engage Icasa specifically on opening up licensing in these areas. This will link up with research being conducted, through the Community Media Policy Unit, into the allocation of frequencies which is hampering development of community radio in some areas. The community radio sector has identified that community radio stations are not equitably distributed in terms of rural/urban distribution and in terms of provincial distribution. This situation needs attention and the FXI aims to lobby for such considerations in its dealing with Icasa.