The launch of iDike-lethu is the realisation of a dream that started in 2006, when Mrs Thembisa Mjiba-Makasi approached the MDDA for funding after realising that the community of Alice needed a newspaper that is published in isiXhosa, the language that is spoken by the majority of the people in the area. Mjiba-Makasi had noted that the majority of newspapers in Alice only focused on white readership and the black middle class and were published in English and Afrikaans.
IDike-lethu News is published in isiXhosa and English and is distributed in Alice, Fort Beaufort, King Williamstown and Mdantsane. It covers local community news and cultural events that are often ignored by the provincial mainstream newspapers. This community newspaper started with an initial print run of 2500 copies and has grown to a print run of 5000 copies that come out once a month. The owners have been able to convince businesses in the area to buy advertising space in iDike-lethu, in order to make sure that it is a viable and sustainable business.
“The Media Development and Diversity Agency is very proud of iDike-lethu's success. Our target for the next three years is to have at least one radio station and one newspaper in every district municipality. In the Nkonkobe Local Municipality, MDDA has already supported Fort Hare Community Radio station and iDike-lethu News. This is beside other community and small commercial media present in the Amatole District Municipality. As a community, let us celebrate with iDike-lethu and be proud of such achievement. Information and knowledge is power, therefore media is power, and as such owning and controlling media of our own is empowering,” said Mr Lumko Mtimde, Chief Executive Officer of the Media Development and Diversity Agency.
Mr Mtimde also pleaded with local municipalities to support and start using these community media platforms to communicate with their constituencies. The stories of Amatole District/Nkonkobe Local Municipality needed to be told by its own people. Ms Mdazane of Forte Community Radio committed the local radio station in a partnership with the newspaper to maximise economies of scale to the extent possible. Ms Nomawethu Sbukwana of the Eastern Cape Communications Forum (ECCF) said they are working in partnership with all community and small commercial newspapers in the Eastern Cape in order to collectively manage the challenges faced by print media in the province.
It has become a trend for local municipalities to spend huge sums of money hiring communication experts who do not understand the community media landscape they operate within. They end up spending huge sums of money placing adverts in established newspapers; whereas projects like iDike-lethu are easily accessible to communities they are speaking to, in the language of the community and cheaper than the main stream media which may have bigger readership but fewer reading the specific communication. The Mayor, Mr Ntsangane called on Idike-lethu News to discuss a partnership with the Municipality. He committed to supporting the local newspaper, in the same manner as the Municipality supports the Forte Community Radio.
Projects such as iDike-lethu are in touch with the communities they serve. There is citizen participation in the production of information, making communication central to development and the sustainability of democracy. This achievement enable the country to give meaning and effect to the noble provisions of the Constitution of South Africa, which provides for freedom of expression, freedom of the media and the right to access to information, concluded Mtimde.
The story of Inkonkobe Municipality will indeed be told by its citizens in a language best understood by the community.
