Labour voices on the airwaves

Workers on Wednesday labour show on SAFM 

The Diggz Youth A'live leadership and media project

Youth participants' pamphlet on poverty, xenophobia and the need to get organised.

Labour voices on the airwaves across Africa!

Cape Town TV to launch broadcasts

Labour Media Awards - call for nominations

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Labour voices on the airwaves!

The Labour-Community Radio Project (LCRP) has entered another year of working closely with over 40 community radio stations across the 9 provinces of South Africa. The projects’ main activity is the production and broadcast of 32 weeks of labour programming sent to the stations in English, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sesotho and Afrikaans. The programming that is produced by WWMP consists of a labour feature of the week (8 mins), labour news of the week (5 mins) and an HIV&AIDS feature of 4 minutes.  

Live Local Labour shows across the country

The WWMP productions feed into the local labour radio shows which are produced by a community based team of labour hosts, comprised of a trade unionist and community representative who together produce a 1- hour live labour show using the labour productions  in the language of their community. They also invite local guests onto the show to discuss and debate the topic for the week. The shows are intended to inform and educate around labour/working class issues in a participatory manner.

Every year the LCRP labour shows’ season starts with a “Mayday Special” during the last week of April and runs with different topics every week until mid-December.  However, many radio stations have a labour show all year round due to its popularity and relevance locally.  

See the list of LCRP topics for 2008* on our website www.wwmp.org.za and listen to your local community radio station. Remember you can inform us of your labour news stories on 021-4476845!

*list of 2008 topics may change from time to time.

Labour Community Radio Forums – taking radio seriously

The labour radio shows at community radio stations need to be supported to survive and be a permanent feature of community radio. Community radio stations have similar costs to commercial stations but most are located in poor black working class communities where they struggle to survive. Labour hosts are setting up forums where labour and community activists can get involved by participating in the production and promoting the show in the community for mobilising around socio-economic and political issues like poverty the recent xenophobic violence.  

The aim is to ensure a strong relationship between the radio station and the community that ensures that your voice is represented on the airwaves and reflects the needs of the local community.

Through the Mass Education Project partnership with Ditsela and Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) at local level, we are working on ways of growing and strengthening the Labour-Community Radio Forums to play a meaningful educational and organising role in communities. Many poverty related socio-economic and political challenges still exist in our communities and these forums can support communities in organising to take up their issues and using radio as a tool for mobilisation.  

Radio is still the most popular medium –  the LCRP Audience Research in Community Radio says so!

WWMP in partnership with the Community Agency for Social Enquiry (CASE) and the NCRF conducted audience research on 15 community radio stations in the form of 100 surveys and focus groups in each community during September 2007 - January 2008. In the process 30 labour hosts from the communities were trained in research methods and conducting surveys.  The final audience report can be obtained from our website www.wwmp.org.za 

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Workers on Wednesday labour radio show on SAFM

Workers on Wednesday' is a weekly radio show that is broadcastlive every week on SAFM, the SABC's English radio station.  Tune in every week at 10am. 

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The Diggz Youth A’Live Leadership and Media Project 

The Diggz project aims to raise the political and social awareness of youth and support the leadership and organisational capacity of working class youth, by strengthening existing or supporting the establishment of new independent community based youth organisations, through education, media training and community/workplace organizing.

The project started off as a media training and development pilot project during November 2003. Then we were called the Diggz Youth A’live RADIO project, training 25-30 youth to be youth radio producers & presenters on 8 community radio stations in Cape Town (Bush Radio),  Stellenbosch (MFM), Athlone (Radio 786),  Rondebosch (UCT Radio), Paarl (Radio KC), Atlantis (Radio Atlantis), Khayelitsha (Radio Zibonele) & Worcester (Valley FM).

Since 2005 we have expanded to include print media training and the project's core focus is SUPPORTING WORKING CLASS YOUTH TO BE ACTIVISTS IN THEIR COMMUNITIES by forming and strengthening their OWN INDEPENDENT YOUTH COMMUNITY STRUCTURES.

Our core themes around which education and organising takes place are: Quality Education, Youth & Local Government with Gender & HIV/AIDS integrated into both themes. We organise monthly workshops with +/- 60 youth from the participating communities. Regular meetings and local fieldwork activities also takes place in 6 of the areas. During these sessions we engage in OUR YOUTH ISSUES! We learn ORGANISATIONAL skills, LEADERSHIP skills and MEDIA skills….WHY? Why else...BUT TO GET ORGANISED!...SO THAT WE AS YOUTH ARE ON THE AGENDA! SO that OUR VOICES, WORKING CLASS YOUTH VOICES ...ARE HEARD and taken SERIOUSLY! (For more info visit www.diggzmedia.blogspot.com)

Much of our activities this year have focused on preparations for the WWMP Youth Festival scheduled for 6 – 11 July 2008 around the themes of Youth and Service Delivery, the Media, the World of Work and the Crisis in Education. Over 150 youth will engage issues affecting them and discuss how they can organize and respond.

6 – 11 July – Youth Cultural Festival 
University of the Western Cape

For more info contact Ronell on ronell@wwmp.org.za

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Youth Participant's pamphlet on poverty, xenophobia and the need to get organized

Youth participants recently produced a pamphlet directed at youth in their communities in response to the xenophobic violence.  In doing so they clearly draw the links between xenophobic violence, poverty and the competition for resources and the need for working class youth to get organized.

Pamphlet produced by Youth Participants

Who are we?

We are a group of young people from Atlantis, Mitchell’s Plain, Witzenberg district municipality, Khayelitsha, Philipi  and Worcester. In the past three years we have been attending youth workshops organised by the Diggz Youth project of Workers’ World Media Productions.  

As a group we have decided to form independent community youth organisations that deal with issues that affect us as working class youth. By this we mean youth from poor communities.

We are aware that there are racial divisions within the youth but the most important thing is for us it to realise that we are working class youth. We face the same issues, that is a lack of quality education in our schools, poor service delivery for youth, as well as the problem of HIV and Aids. All of these issues seriously threaten our future.

Our organisation will give a platform to working class youth to debate and discuss issues that affect them. The organization will not be affiliated to any political party, religious group or government structures.  

We will strive for gender balance in our organisation, this means respecting each other’s opinions irrespective of gender.  

We will organise to campaign around the issues that affect working class youth so that we can improve conditions for youth.  

What is this about?  

We condemn the violent attacks on foreigners and the looting of their property!! We also want to give our own perspective, outline the context of these xenophobic attacks and highlight some areas that need urgent attention regarding what has happened.  

What are the real issues behind the attacks?  

Poverty and lack of service delivery for the poor especially those who live in informal settlements. It has been a very long time since we attained freedom and declared our country democratic. For ordinary people there is no real difference in their lives. Instead things are getting worse while they wait in vain for the government’s lip- services of a people’s contract to create work and fight poverty. The increasing food prices have also contributed to what has happened

Unemployment especially youth unemployment is very high, with up to 70% of black youth unemployed. According to the Minister of safety and Security, Charles Nqakula, 1 384 suspects have been arrested and many of them were involved in violence and robbery. During the violence, shops belonging to foreigners were looted and subsequently burnt down. We all saw on TV and in newspapers that most of the perpetrators were young people and it is for this reason that we believe that youth unemployment was also a factor.

Irresponsible journalism also contributed to the mayhem.  A Johannesburg based tabloid referred to foreigners as aliens. How can we say other Africans are aliens? We live in the same continent, our cultures are similar and our languages come from the same root. We are the same people and the only thing that separates us are the artificial borders that were drawn up in Berlin in 1883 and we as Africans we were never even a part of that.

Competition for resources- Because of lack of service delivery by the government poor people are finding themselves having to compete for resources. Housing is one of them.  The government has not built affordable, quality houses for the poor. Instead the RDP houses that the government is busy building have become smaller, expensive and poor in quality.

People are looking for scapegoats to blame for what is happening in their increasingly miserable lives. Because of the above-mentioned points people are looking for someone to blame.  Unfortunately, the foreigners were seen as the enemy.  

Solution to the problem!!!!  

As young people living in these communities we are saying that we need to understand where the real problem lies. And the real problem has got to do with the economic policies that our government has adopted. We are saying that the policies have and will not address the needs of the poor and the youth.

It is for this reason that we believe that there is a need for us, together with our African brothers and sisters to organise and make our concerns known to the authorities including the government. We should organize and pressurize government to deliver on their mandate and promise of “ a better life for all”, including African refugees and migrants.  

If you want to join us or want to know more we are going to have our regular monthly meetings in  

For more information on the meeting call Jumbo, Mzi, Ronell or Lunga on 021-4472727

Contributors: Anele Pendze, Monica Willingh, Franklin Wessels and Mzi Velapi

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Labour Voices on the Airwaves Across Africa!

As part of building continent-wide information networks and help build pan-African solidarity and democracy, Workers World Media Productions has partnered with trade union federations of 10 African country to produce and broadcast a weekly Africa Labour Radio Show across the continent and locally in the participating countries (Lesotho,  
South Africa, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Ghana and Nigeria). The SABC’s Channel Africa and public broadcasters in 3 of the countries have agreed to broadcast the show. 
It will also be broadcast on the over 40 community radio stations participating in the LCRP in South Africa.

The agreed show format includes a feature on a special weekly topic, a segment on HIV and AIDS, and a labour news bulletin. We aim to produce features on labour laws, social dialogue, privatisation, child labour, SA business in Africa , trade unions and democracy, labour migration and xenophobia, the informal sector, trade unions and economic policy and NEPAD. The show will be 30-minutes long and consist of the features on the weekly topic, the HIV&AIDS segment and labour news and will run for 12 weeks. Thereafter the weekly labour news bulletin will be extended to 15 minutes and run until mid-December.

Given the current xenophobic crisis in South Africa, the program could have not  have happened at a better time, for helping build African labour and working class solidarity. 

This is the first of its kind on the continent and globally. It’s all about making labour and working class issues take their rightful place on the airwaves and making sure that you get informed, empowered and educated on issues that affect workers and their families in Africa. This is the beginning of the real African renaissance.

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Cape Town TV to launch broadcasts

Cape Town is to have its very own television station, which intends to start broadcasting in August this year.  

The new channel – called Cape Town TV (or CTV) – has recently been awarded a community television broadcasting licence by the Independent Broadcasting Authority of South Africa (ICASA). This means that the station must be a non-profit operation and must be “owned and controlled” by the community of Cape Town, that being defined as all those who can view the channel on their television sets.

This is a breakthrough for Capetonians in terms of freedom of expression and enabling them to reflect on their lives and organize around issues that concern them like housing, electricity, education and employment.  

Cape Town TV has been working towards this point for the past three years. This process has entailed mobilizing the people of Cape Town through developing a membership base of organisations that represent their interests.  

Founded by over 100 non-profit organisations in 2006, CTV is committed to providing community access to the powerful medium of television as a tool to promote community cultural development, human rights and social justice.  

The aim of this community TV channel is to give civil society a presence in television. This means that community organisations, trade unions, NGOs, educational  institutions and government will all become content providers and will form the economic underpinning of CTV.  

Membership of Cape Town TV is open to any organisation with a developmental orientation in the sectors of arts and culture, education, sport, labour and non-profit organisations. The annual membership fee is R1000, but organizations that are unable to afford this fee can request a reduction or exemption from the board. The fee structure contributes towards democratic ownership and funding, rather than the channel having to rely solely on commercial revenue.   

The new channel couldn’t have come at a better time as we face crises in various aspects of our lives such as rising food prices, rampant crime and environmental degradation. The only people who can deal with these issues effectively are those in the community itself. But to do that Capetonians must get organized and community TV is one means to support the community in addressing issues that affect it through information, education and entertainment.  

Cape Town TV will also contribute to the development of the video industry by providing opportunities for independent production houses, emerging film makers and video students to produce content. While programming will focus mainly on Cape Town , international programmes will also present a window to the world that is different from mainstream television.

Labour Media Awards - call for nominations

Workers World Media Productions will be launching its annual labour media awards in up to 6 categories for 2008 - 2009. We are calling for nominations for a panel of 5 assessors/judges.

Please submit your nominations with a short motivation to lynn@wwmp.org.za by no later than 25th July 2008 .

Criteria for assessors/judges as follows:  

• Several years experience as a labour or community activists/ academic and/or media producer with a keen interest and commitment to the cause of labour and the working class.

• Independent and critically minded

• Prepared to be part of the panel on a voluntary basis.  

The categories have not been finalized yet and will be based on the panel’s recommendation and decision of the WWMP Board. Initial thinking:  

• Best article form within the labour movement (union newsletters, SALB, LSO’s etc.)

• Best article in the commercial/mainstream media

• Best website

• Best artistic contribution (poster, art-work, song, musical composition, cartoon etc.)

• Best radio or film production

• Best publication