Address by COSATU 1st Deputy President, Joe Nkosi, launch of the Labour Community Radio Project in Johannesburg, 20 May - 2004

 

Comrades and friends

The Labour-Community Radio Project is a very welcome step forward for the trade union movement in South Africa. I would like to congratulate and thank all those who have worked so hard to bring it about.

The business community have hours of time each week on TV and radio and page after page in the newspapers and magazines to publicise their views, while the workers=92 movement always has to struggle to get its news and opinions across.

We have some great union magazines and newsletters. They play an important role in keeping our own members informed. But they rarely reach those who are not members of a union, the unemployed and those working in low-paid casual jobs. Yet these are often the people most in need of the protection the unions can give. In addition there are still some older workers who struggle to read papers and magazines.

So the broadcasts put out by this project, on 40 community radio stations, will reach a whole new audience, many of them in remote rural areas, miles away from their nearest union office or local meeting. They will be broadcast in the main language spoken in the area covered by the radio station.

The shows will bring listeners the latest news of what is happening in the workplaces and union meetings. They will inform people of their rights under the labour laws, about unfair dismissals and discrimination by employers, about how they can obtain grants, what to do about HIV/Aids and hundreds of other issues.

They will educate our communities on the big issues of the day, so that they know about new laws and government initiatives and how these can be used to improve their lives.

They will all be phone-in programmes, so listeners will not just have to listen passively but can get on the air to tell us in the unions what we ought do be doing for them. They can let us know where we may be going wrong. It will be a perfect opportunity to bring out into the open some of the problems workers and the unemployed face day after day.

We are all shocked when we hear about some of the abuse of workers on the farms, yet for the farming communities these are part of everyday life. This radio project can be the way to get these scandals into the public arena and, we hope, tackled and resolved by the government departments, together with the trade unions.

As well as the more serious items, I hope that the programmes will air some of the best of workers=92 culture, starting with the magnificent concert, Solidarity Forever, recorded by some of our finest musicians at last year COSATU National Congress.

One of the best things about these programmes is that they will be hosted not by professional broadcasters but by union members, who speak the same language as their listeners and understand their problems. These presenters will acquire valuable skills, which will be put to good use in helping our communities.

Let us hope that the SABC, which is supposed to be our public broadcaster - but which too often prefers importing cheap American programmes than dealing with the problems of ordinary South Africans =96 will learn from this project and start to carry the same kind of labour programmes on all of their stations.

I also appeal to any community radio stations who are not yet participating on the LCRP to come on board and put these programmes on their schedules. We are sure you will get a good audience.

Comrades and friends

I wish the project every success. There is no doubt that this is an initiative worthy of the support of every trade union and it will have a huge impact on thousands of our people.