Participatory radio as the voice of the community : a comparative study of selected radio stations in the Eastern Cape, South Africa

This research project was aimed at assessing whether community radio stations are indeed the voice of the community or are set out to fulfil their own agenda. This study therefore looked at three different categories of community radio stations, namely the faith-based radio (Kingfisher FM), geographic community radio (Radio Grahamstown) and institutional community radio (Forte FM) with the aim of studying their activities and comparing the three. Relevant literature has been reviewed and data have been collected using both quantitative and qualitative methods through questionnaires, personal interviews and focus group interviews. The study however leans more on the qualitative approach and a quantitative approach has merely been used to identify the trends of the views of the participants. The analysis of data highlights the views of the respondents about these radio stations as the voice of the community. The views of the respondents from the three radio stations showed that these stations enjoy a very good patronage from the listeners in Port Elizabeth (Kingfisher FM), Grahamstown (Radio Grahamstown) and Alice (Forte FM), respectively. The results and discussions confirm that these radio stations meet their various individual needs of the listeners and that of the community at large. In addition, the fact that participants of the focus groups and survey respondents for these three selected radio stations reported that the Station regularly fulfils the major functions of a radio station, which is to inform, educate and entertain them, showed that these radio stations are acting socially responsible as well. This study was also able to confirm that these community radio stations do give opportunities to listeners to contribute to programme content development, which shows the willingness of these stations to give voice to the listeners and allow them to be part of their own personal development and that of the community at large

An Assessment of Public Works Programmes as a Poverty Reduction Strategy for Rural Zimbabwe: A Study on Chivi District

With the progression of the new millennium, a new socio-economic order has taken charge in most developing countries, unfavourable to the well-being of the less economically advantaged populations. Seemingly, Zimbabwe was not an exception to this development. Increasing concerns have been expressed about the effects of the several interventions aimed at poverty reduction in Zimbabwe, both from within and outside the country. The programmes and projects that have been devised to address poverty nationally and at local levels since 1980 have allocated vast amounts of resources and funding to different projects and initiatives. The nature of these initiatives have not demonstrated huge and resounding successes mostly because there have been serious shortcomings in their conceptualization and implementation. Based on the social development theory that believes that the human being should be the centre of development, this paper conceived poverty as deprivation of means of securing necessities in life. This study focused on assessing why the contribution of Food-for-work and Cash-for-work (public works) programmes towards reducing vulnerability of households to the problems of food deprivation, unemployment, and social exclusion in making important decisions in life has not produced resounding results. From the discussions held it was established that, poverty in the Chivi District is strongly linked to a failure of productive agriculture and exclusion from formal or urban wage employment. The main conclusions are that the public works programme has neither brought all the benefits its proponents expected, nor negatively affected the society as badly as critics of the programme might have believed. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n23p173

Readers' perspectives: examining the influence of political news in Zimbabwe

This article reports on a study using the concept of accessibility and applicability of knowledge to analyse readers’ perspectives on the influence of political news in Zimbabwe. A qualitative content analysis was applied to analyse political articles from two main newspapers, The Sunday Mail and The NewsDay. Focus group discussions were conducted in Harare to collect readers’ perspectives on the effect of political news and print media. The findings revealed that readers choose what to believe as true or false determined by affiliation, knowledge and experience. Readers as individuals can block political messages dissonant to pre-conceived ideas and accept that which is consonant to pre- existing beliefs depending on personal experience, knowledge and affiliation