The media in South Africa commemorates the 41st anniversary of the infamous “Black Wednesday” which happened on the 19 October 1977, The World and Weekend World newspapers and several organisations were banned.
We have come a long way to media freedom in this country. Being Africa’s oldest community radio station project, which at one stage faced the full wrath of the apartheid government, we feel it is our duty and responsibility to promote accurate and fair reporting.
Bush Radio does not have the resources to be a “breaking news” station, but it is our duty to be accurate and give our listeners an opportunity to make up their own minds. This however can only happen if we present all sides of any argument, through good research and having access to role-players like politicians on a local, provincial and national level – this is proving harder and harder as officials simply refuse to comment or respond to questions from our newsroom and producers.
We call on all role-players who have an interest in improving the lives of the people on the Cape Flats to be accessible, especially to community media who truly speak and represent the people of Cape Town. It is only by engaging on the hard questions that we can truly claim to be improving the lives of citizens – and being a platform where people and audience can engage with political and social leaders. Thereby learning, healing and growing this wonderful city.
As a place where many young journalists start in their careers, we call upon our audience to hold us accountable and engage with us around our reporting and broadcasts.
Background on Black Wednesday:
On this day in 1977 in South Africa, then Minister of Justice Jimmy Kruger, banned The World and Weekend World newspapers by stating that these publications were “publishing inflammatory material that threatened the nation’s security” and the paper’s editor Percy Qoboza and other journalists were arrested and jailed.
19 organisations were also banned and apartheid critics were detained.
The organisations banned were BPC, SASO, Black Community Programmes, Black Parents Association, Black Women’s Federation, Border Youth Organisation, Eastern Province Youth Organisation, Medupe Writers Association, Natal Youth Organisation, National Youth Organisation, SASM, Soweto Students Representative Council, Soweto Teachers Action Committee, Transvaal Youth Organisation, Union of Black Journalists, Western Cape Youth Organisation, Zimele Trust Fund, Association for the Educational and Cultural Advancement of African People of South Africa.
Banning orders were also served on Beyers Naude and journalist Donald Woods.
The first Roskilde Festival took place in 1971, in July 2018 the Wrong Rock Show’s and Finland’s DJ Finnjävel visited the festival for the 21st time. You might already have heard my musical report from Roskilde, broadcast on Bush Radio 23 July 2018 – if not, you’ll find it here.
South Africans galore
Without examining all the old festival programmes, I’d claim 2018 might have set a new record for the number of South African artists playing Roskilde: BCUC, FAKA and Moonchild Sanelly all featured in this year’s line-up.
BCUC’s Zithulele “Jovi” Zabani Nkosi
BCUC’s Kgomotso Neo Mokone
Soweto’s BCUC knocked me out with their mind-blowing live show at last year’s festival, see my 2017 blog entry. This year, they returned to a bigger stage (moving from Gloria, with a capacity of about 1,000 people, to Pavilion, being roughly twice the size of Gloria). I’m happy to report that history repeated itself: the place was packed and we all went nuts, singing “ain’t no party like a Roskilde party” as we strolled out of the tent after the concert. If the band’s Roskildevolution continues like this, I guess BCUC will headline the festival in less than five years. (I might add that it really is quite rare for artists to play Roskilde two years in a row; more or less the only band that springs to my mind is Finland’s The Flaming Sideburns, who played both 2000 and 2001.)
The rest of the South Africans performed at KlubRÅ, an intimate club space first introduced in 2017, fusing art and music at the festival. The Johannesburg performance art duo FAKA had prepared a show especially for KlubRÅ, and earlier that same day, they also participated in a short artist talk about being black and queer together with Sandra Mujinga from Norway.
Sandra Mujinga
FAKA’s Buyani “Desire Marea” Duma
FAKA’s Thato “Fela Gucci” Ramaisa
FAKA
Just like FAKA, Moonchild Sanelly is also based in Johannesburg, and she brought her “future ghetto funk” – mixing music, fashion and dance – to KlubRÅ at the final night of the festival. She was also invited by Damon Albarn to join Gorillaz for one song, the last band playing Roskilde’s gigantic main Orange stage (with a capacity of more than 60,000 people) this year.
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Equality, art and activism
Starting in 2016, Roskilde Festival’s three-year standpoint theme has been equality, with a focus on political equality and human rights in 2016, cultural equality in 2017, and, finally, economic equality (and inequality, leading to migration and corruption) in 2018. The ordinary beer drinking, head banging festival goers might not necessarily have noticed this standpoint, at least not until they bumped into the “equality walls” situated near the Orange stage. These were copies of some of the prototypes of the wall that Donald Trump plans to construct between the United States and Mexico.
Equality walls
Initially, I wasn’t that impressed by this year’s Art Zone (situated between Orange and Gloria) exhibitions, but much of the artwork actually looked better at night.
Jillian Mayer’s (USA) Slumpies were a series of abstract furniture sculptures
Synthetic fluorescent stone sculptures by Nat Bloch Gregersen from Denmark
Pathway, designed by SANO, an architectural office based in Copenhagen
Graffiti artist: Alice Pasquini (Italy)
Graffiti artist: Farid Rueda (Mexico)
Graffiti has always been a part of Roskilde Festival, but usually the art curators also try to come up with something new and exciting every year. This year, there were a couple of fascinating installations in the foyer of Gloria. Pleun van Dijk from The Netherlands mass-produced little babies, while the Danish Lysbid duo (Maria Cramer Møller and Anna Østergaard Laursen) sold personalised jelly shots – in exchange for your fingerprints and access to your personal data…
Pleun van Dijk: Replika – Staging a Human Production-Line
Welcome to the body lab
The Lysbid bar
An “activist talk about rights and personal engagement” might not sound like the most exciting of events at a festival, but whistleblower Chelsea Manning spellbound the audience who managed to squeeze into Gloria at Roskilde Festival. And that shouldn’t surprise anybody, because few people alive can match her background, if you ask me.
She (or should I say he, because back then she was known as Bradley Manning) joined the US Army after finishing high school in 2007. In 2009, Manning was sent to Iraq as an intelligence analyst. In early 2010, she sent some 700,000 classified documents to WikiLeaks, who published the material via The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel. Manning was arrested some months later, and sentenced to 35 years in prison in 2013 – the longest sentence ever given for leaking US government information. While in prison, she publicly identified as a trans woman and began transgender hormone therapy. In his last week in office, President Barack Obama commuted Manning’s sentence, and she was released in May 2017. And then, in July 2018, Chelsea Manning gave her talk at Roskilde Festival.
Chelsea Manning
After seven years in prison, Chelsea Manning found Trump’s America resembling Iraq (see video): ”I was very alarmed, you know. I went out and everywhere I looked, you know, I see, everywhere in America right now, it’s just heavily armed police, body armour, rifles… I see a domestic military operation.”
Chelsea Manning also said that everybody belonging to any minority has reasons to be afraid in America right now. Now, that sounds scary. Who of us does not belong to some minority? Chelsea’s talk ended on a happier note, though: she has taken up music again, so maybe she’ll show up as an electronica artist at future Roskilde Festivals.
Possibly boring but certainly important facts about volunteering and sustainability
Just like Bush Radio (albeit on a different scale), Roskilde Festival depends on the work of volunteers. 31,000 volunteers helped making the non-profit festival great again this year, and most of these return to work for Roskilde year after year. And once again, the festival was completely sold out (80,000 full festival tickets + 20,000 one-day tickets) well in advance. The Roskilde Festival Charity Society organises the festival with the purpose of generating funds to donate to humanitarian and cultural initiatives. Over the years, the society has donated more than 345 million DKK to charity – just to name one example: in August this year, the festival supported Copenhagen Pride with a 500,000 DKK (approximately 67,000 EUR) donation.
Roskilde Festival has an ambitious 2016-2019 strategy for social and environmental sustainability. The goals include the festival activities being carried out “without negative environmental impact” and “with consideration and respect for human rights and human resources”. A lot of work needs to be done before these goals are fulfilled, and the festivalgoers can also do their share. For instance, a lot of camping gear is left behind, and the festival spends 8 million DKK every year cleaning up this mess.
There are about 180 food and beverage stands at Roskilde Festival, and last year they reached the goal of serving an average of 90% organic food across all stands (with almost every fifth stand serving 100% organic food). This year, the food stands also presented “climate menus”, showing calculated CO2 emissions of every dish.
A few more highlights and one single Finn
I don’t even need to check the musical programme before heading to Roskilde; I just know that I will meet old favourites of mine at the festival and I will stumble upon “new” artists to fall in love with instantly. Let me present one each of these from this year’s line-up.
I’ve seen the Norwegian free jazz drummer Paal Nilssen-Love at least three times before at Roskilde Festival: the three-headed garage jazz beast The Thing played in 2006, the cacophonic free jazz ensemble Fire! Orchestra (with some 30 members) in 2014 – both of these are led by sax master Mats Gustafsson, by the way – and in 2014, Paal also played as a noisy no-wave duo with Arto Lindsay. Fantastic concerts, each and every one of these, I might add.
Paal Nilssen-Love on stage with his Japan Free Jazz and Noise combo
This year, Paal Nilssen-Love played three unique shows in Roskilde, blasting off on Wednesday with Paal Nilssen-Love’s Japan Free Jazz and Noise – and I guess the name says it all… A wonderfully brutal gig! On Thursday, it was time for another world premiere, Paal Nilssen-Love’s Brazil Funk Impro: “groovy, noisy, loud and hard”, in the words of Mr. Nilssen-Love himself. On Friday, Paal went to a jazz festival in Norway, only to return on Saturday with the big band Large Unit Brazil Edition.
A small part of Large Unit Brazil Edition
You might have noticed that I haven’t been praising any Finnish bands playing Roskilde 2018, and the only reason for that is there were no Finnish bands playing Roskilde 2018… But wait! I still have an ace up my sleeve! The Finnish electronic noise artist Tommi Keränen is a member of Large Unit, and there he was, turning his knobs, stage left…
Tommi Keränen, Finland
If Paal Nilssen-Love was well known to me beforehand, the same cannot be said about Rascasuelos from Argentina, playing passionate tango “with the intensity of a rock band”, according to the festival programme. They are one of the groups at the forefront of Buenos Aires’ contemporary tango scene, and since their live show featured dancers as well, I was in for a real treat.
Rascasuelos with band leader Patricio Bonfiglio on bandoneón in the background
May I have this dance?
Most of the food I had at Roskilde Festival was quite disappointing, but this Vegan Russian was one of the most delicious drinks I have ever had
COSATU and Proudly South African are calling on young designers of clothing, jewellery, shoes or any other local products to participate in the Small Business Conference taking place on the 11 October 2018 from at the Cape Town Convention Centre.
Designers can participate in the fashion show to showcase their products and designs, and will also be given a stall for FREE to exhibit their work to businesses and industry.
To participate, call Lumka Tamboer at COSATU on 021-4480045 or email tamboer@cosatu.org.za
The 21st of September marks the International Day of Peace. It is a day devoted to strengthening the ideals of peace, both within and among all nations and peoples.
In 2003 Bush Radio started its “Bush against War” campaign, at the time the United States government and its allies issued an ultimatum to Iraq around the issue of weapons of mass destruction. Bush Radio held various protests and “pavement broadcasts” encouraging a peaceful resolution. Unfortunately what is now known as the “Iraq Conflict” is still ongoing.
We at Bush Radio continue to encourage peaceful resolutions, but we can’t just hope, we encourage all listeners and supporters to “Listen, engage and do!” around all conflicts.
*The audio in the clip is taken from our original ultimatum in 2003 – the announcement is voiced by the late Zane Ibrahim and the remixed version of the anti-war song – Give peace a chance by John Lennon, features the voices of Ready D, Godessa and the young people from our Children’s Radio Education Workshop (CREW)
*Pics sourced from the Bushradio Picture archive
*The conflict is also known as the War in Iraq, the Occupation of Iraq, the Second Gulf War, and Gulf War II. The period of the war lasting from 2003 to 2010 was referred to as Operation Iraqi Freedom by the United States military.
As part of our Heritage Day celebrations, Bush Radio and Robben Island Museum is giving you a chance to visit the Island free on the 24 September 2018.
We are giving away 10 double tickets!
All you need to do is answer the following question:
Send your answer + the keyword RIM to 32158 and stand a chance to win a double ticket.
Lines close Thursday (20 September 2018) midday and winners will be announced on Friday in the Morning Cruise after 9am.
* This is a lucky draw, enter often to increase your chances.
* If you are selected you will have to collect before 4pm on Friday with identification.
* SMS costs R1 and free sms’s do not apply.
Bush Radio is opening applications for internship positions for those interested in getting into media. No prior formal qualification is required.
The internship will provide basic experience in journalism, radio content production and multimedia.
Please read the requirements below CAREFULLY – should the information be incomplete or incorrect, your application will not be considered.
Are you…
Curious, adventurous, always looking for a story, willing to hunt down a source, hungry to learn, energetic, able to speak, write and read in English & Afrikaans/Xhosa, willing to explore new frontiers in media?
Would you like to…
Record sound, conduct interviews, compile bulletins, read bulletins, take pictures, record video, cover events, test your skills LIVE to a listening and online audience of over 375 000 people, generate interview ideas, liaise with guests, assist presenter, research, package and present, liaise with listeners regarding programmes, updating blogs/websites, present as needed / capable, participate in outside broadcasts or events, build your career and profile?
Requirements:
No formal qualifications are required but the candidates must be computer literate and understand, write and read English and one other language (Afrikaans or Xhosa)
You will be required full-time (ie Monday – Friday) or shifts (06h00 – 14h00 and 10h00 –18h00 –including weekend and public holiday shifts depending on the area you are placed.
You must be available to start immediately.
You will not receive payment! This is a volunteer internship at Africa’s leading community radio station. Transport allowance of R500 per month for 3 months (probation), increased to R 1000 thereafter, non-negotiable for 9 months.
Shortlisted candidates will be put through a combination written test (for computer skills, language, general knowledge) and a voice test. – If selected for the test it will happen the week of the 25th September 2018
In the subject line clearly state: Intern October 2018
Application deadline: 24 September 2018
Bush Radio reserves the right not to make an appointment – Only shortlisted candidates ill be contacted – No correspondence will be entered into. If you have been contacted within one week of the closing date you should consider your application unsuccessful.
A dynamic and vibrant young women with a passion for working with young people, she continued to be involved in the project fulfilling the role of facilitator and organiser within Bush Radio for both CREW and the Media Kidocracy Konfrence. She was last working as a branch co-ordinator at Ikamva Youth SA.
We would like to extend our condolences to Nosiphiwo’s family, friends, colleagues and members of CREW.
A big thank you to all who contributed during our birthday month. If you were unable to donate in August please consider doing it now or setting up a monthly debit order to help us continue our work.
Your contribution makes the continued existence of Bush Radio possible, and also makes the opportunity available to others to benefit from Bush Radio’s services.
Our bank details are as follows:
Standard Bank: Bush Radio Training Account
Account number: 071194185
Branch: Mowbray
Branch code: 004909
If you would like a receipt for your donation, email the proof of payment to: donate@bushradio.co.za
For more information contact Bush Radio on 021-448 5450.
It is the final week of August, our birthday and pledge month and we would like to say thanks to those who have pledged and donated to support the work of Bush Radio of Africa’s oldest community radio station project.
There is still time to donate and help us to continue.
Our bank details are as follows:
Standard Bank: Bush Radio Training
Account Account number: 071194185
Branch: Mowbray
Branch code: 004909
If you would like a receipt for your donation, email the proof of payment to: donate@bushradio.co.za
For more information contact Bush Radio on 021-448 5450.
We asked people how they feel about South Africa. Find out where they are getting their information by watching the “Where do you get your information?” VideoVox.
COSATU
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