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Khayelitsha - a mini-audit
the venue - Look Out Hill
service providers
media partner Radio Zibonele
jobs & revenue created
budget

Radio Zibonele 98.2FM

Radio Zibonele is Khayelitsha's community radio station, with a listenership of approximately 135 000 people per day.

The joy of community radio is that it is easily accessible. Unlike commercial radio stations based in the city, it is easy to reach the necessary staff members, and the ethos of the station is to be open to members of the community and ideas that reflect the needs and desires of the community.

However community radio in Cape Town is also very unfocused and unprofessionally managed.

When we approached Zibonele with the idea of being the Sunday Spends Media partner, they were excited and surprised. And while they embraced the idea, the two week partnership also exposed the weaknesses in their internal operations. They operate as one expects an operation in the second economy - without any real structure or seemingly any unified purpose. There is no clear marketing plan, and the marketing department, while they created the space for the Spends, made no input whatsoever to the media programme.

Their main concern was to have their banners visible at the venue during the event. On the day of the first Spends, they arrived three quarters of the way through the show to erect their banners. They never arrived for the second show.

While the Spends benefitted from the media exposure, Zibonele did not make much mileage out of it because they did not recognise its potential to grow their profile.