The Eastern Cape station manager building rural youth skills through the airwaves

Sikelela Thobigunya, the 31-year-old station manager of Bulungula Community Radio, has loved the airwaves since childhood. Over the past eight years, he has dedicated his time to building the small broadcaster, based in the Xhora Mouth Administrative Area of Elliotdale, Eastern Cape, into a hub for youth development and community news.

Standing with Daily Maverick in the colourful rondavel that houses the community station, Thobigunya’s passion for the project is unmistakable. In between answering questions, he pops his head into the broadcast booth to make sure one of the team’s most popular programmes, The Mid-Morning Fix, is running smoothly.

“I manage all of the presenters in terms of scheduling the programmes... and creating the rundown for each. You can’t just go on and play only music. You need to have time management on your show – how many features, and how long does it take?” he says.

When Thobigunya started at the station in 2018, shortly after completing his matric, there was only one other presenter, who doubled as the station manager. The station was on air from 2pm to 4.30pm daily.

Now, there are 13 radio presenters from the local villages, almost all in their 20s, running 16 programmes. The station’s schedule runs from 5am to 9pm from Monday to Thursday, and from 7am to 9pm at weekends.

The Bulungula Community Radio among the projects that fall under the local nonprofit, the Bulungula Incubator.

For the love of radio

Thobigunya grew up listening to the radio with his uncle, who enjoyed a variety of stations in different languages. It was during this time that his love of broadcasting was born.

In 2016, while he was still in school, Thobigunya added all his classmates to a WhatsApp group and started recording his own informal radio segments, which he sent to them regularly.

“Those 16 students, they motivated me every day. One of those listeners on my WhatsApp was someone from this area, and that is the one who told me about [Bulungula Community Radio],” Thobigunya recalls.

Thobigunya travelled to visit the station, which was about three hours from the village where he lived, in late 2017. He left his details there and received a call to pitch his programme ideas to the station manager in 2018.

“I said, let me focus on a traditional music show, because my role model was a presenter doing traditional music on the national radio… at UMhlobo Wenene FM,” he says.

After joining the radio station as a presenter, Thobigunya interviewed several well-known local traditional music artists on air, and later introduced an “afternoon drive” programme for listeners.

He was joined by another young presenter, Mzi Sakabhe, not long after starting at Bulungula Community Radio. Sakabhe, a performer, initially came to submit his music to be played on air, and was persuaded by the team to get involved in broadcasting.

Sakabhe began with the Spaza Music Show and later co-created Vukanathi, a breakfast show, with Thobigunya, extending the station’s operations into the early morning.

“Around March, April 2018, we were joined by many in the community, and they were interested. The management of the station said that maybe the youth of this village was motivated because they saw that people their age were on the radio now,” says Thobigunya.

Broadening the station’s reach

Thobigunya estimates that Bulungula Community Radio reaches about 70 villages and 20,000 listeners via FM and online streams across the country. The data the station collects suggests that most of its listeners are younger people between the ages of 18 and 40.

While the station has a low-power sound broadcasting service licence, it is progressing through the formal licensing process with the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) with the aim of broadening its reach to other communities.

The station’s applications for a community sound broadcasting service licence have twice been rejected, but now it has managed to pass both phase one and phase two of the licensing process, giving Thobigunya hope that it may soon take the next step in its broadcasting venture.

“We want to reach many, many communities,” he says.

The station has become a valuable source of local news in the Xhora Mouth area. It has a weekly slot for health-related topics and a regular storytelling segment for local school children.

Since becoming station manager in 2022, Thobigunya’s focus has been on ensuring that every presenter performs to the best of their abilities. It’s a job he takes seriously, monitoring feedback from his team and listener data. When he is not at the station, he tunes in at his office and home to make sure the programmes are on track.

The Bulungula Community Radio’s growth over almost a decade of operations has shown the value of the station’s role in connecting and informing people across the deep rural community, as well as its potential to give the youth from local villages a space for expression and skills development. DM