Radio, Community and Identity in South Africa

Author's Abstract

This dissertation deals with community radio in South Africa, before and after democratic elections in 1994. Adopting a case study approach and drawing on ethnographic methodology, the dissertation outlines the history of Bush Radio, the oldest community radio project in Africa.

To demonstrate how Bush Radio creates community, this dissertation focuses on several cases within Bush Radio. The use of hip-hop for social change is explored. Framed within theories of entertainment-education and behavior change, the dissertation explores specific programmes on-air and outreach programmes offered by the station. This dissertation also looks at kwaito music, a new hybrid musical form that emerged in South Africa post-apartheid. In particularly, the dissertation argues that Bush Radio uses kwaito music in the consolidation of a black identity in South Africa.

Programmes targeting children and youth are also discussed, and the dissertation argues that Bush Radio offers a space for the creation of a generation consciousness in the post-apartheid era. Finally, the dissertation looks at how Bush Radio creates and maintains a gay community through its program In the Pink. Rooted in cultural studies, this dissertation draws on the theory of rhizomatics espoused by Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, arguing for new, creative theorizations of alternative media. Furthermore, this dissertation uses Victor Turner’s communitas and Pierre Bourdieu’s habitus to deconstruct the community in community radio.

In particular, I argue that Bush Radio is not so much an organization as it is an organism, held together by a complex set of interlinked structures, with the concept of “community” pulsating as its central life-force. A kind of “body without organs” (Haraway, 1989), Bush Radio has no real essence - it is both the embodiment of community radio at its best - and its antithesis. Bush Radio is not a “bush” radio, geographically or figuratively. It sports state of the art digital equipment and a relatively sophisticated organizational structure, yet it is still deeply connected to the various communities it serves.