Bush Radio is a popular and pioneering community

radio station Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radi ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

. The station broadcasts programs in English, Afrikaans and isiXhosa from Salt River, Cape Town on 89.5 MHz FM, with a music and talk format aimed at the 18 to 39 age group.

Early life

Bush Radio started out as a project of the Cassette Education Trust during the last stages of the struggle against

apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

."Community radio in post-apartheid South Africa: The case of Bush Radio in Cape Town"
. ''Transformations'', February 2005. Its programmes were distributed on cassette tape. Many of its volunteers and programmers were students from the

University of the Western Cape The University of the Western Cape (UWC) is a public research university in Bellville, near Cape Town, South Africa. The university was established in 1959 by the South African government as a university for Coloured people only. Other un ...

, which did not at the time have its own campus radio station."The road to community radio". ''Rhodes Journalism Review'', September 2004. After being denied broadcast licenses on two occasions by South Africa's broadcast regulator, the station launched as an illegal

pirate radio Pirate radio or a pirate radio station is a radio station that broadcasts without a valid license. In some cases, radio stations are considered legal where the signal is transmitted, but illegal where the signals are received—especially ...

station on April 25, 1993, but was shut down by authorities within a few hours. With the democratization of South Africa around the time of the

1994 elections The following elections occurred in the year 1994. Africa * 1994 Botswana general election * 1994 Guinea-Bissau general election * 1994 Malawian general election * 1994 Mozambican general election * 1994 Namibian general election * 1994 South Af ...

, however, the station was soon granted a temporary broadcasting license, becoming one of the first media outlets in South Africa not owned by either the government or a commercial media company. Due to bureaucratic difficulties surrounding the country's transition to democracy, however, the station only received yearly temporary license renewals until being granted its first permanent broadcasting license in 2002. In its original incarnation, the station was led by Edric Gorfinkel. Once the station became a licensed operation, its management was taken over by Zane Ibrahim, who oversaw the station's transformation from an anti-apartheid activist project into a broader community-oriented broadcaster. Station volunteer Lumko Mtimde was also tapped to head the National Community Radio Forum, an organization which helped to establish a legislative and collaborative framework for the establishment and expansion of community radio in South Africa, and later became a member of South Africa's new broadcast regulator, the Independent Broadcasting Authority. In 2000 Bush Radio received one of the

Prince Claus Awards The Prince Claus Fund was established in 1996, named in honor of Prince Claus of the Netherlands. It receives an annual subsidy from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Fund has presented the international Prince Claus Awards annually si ...

in the theme "Urban Heroes".

Services

In addition to the radio service, Bush Radio also offers media training, multimedia and community development programs.

References

External links

Bush Radio official website
Radio stations in Cape Town Community radio stations in South Africa Former pirate radio stations Radio stations established in 1993 1993 establishments in South Africa {{SouthAfrica-radio-station-stub