Community radio was the heartbeat of the panel discussion hosted by Ferguson Media with the three voices, Robin Sewlal, Gavin Koppel (Gavin Kay), and Katie Mohamed. Who’ve each shaped South African broadcasting, storytelling, and community life in different ways.
Sewlal, a long-time radio historian and advocate, helped set the scene by tracing how radio in South Africa has evolved over a century and why it remains one of the country’s most intimate public platforms.
Koppel, a veteran broadcaster known for radio that uplifts and connects audiences, added a practitioner’s view of radio’s everyday power. Mohamed, a leading strategist and storyteller focused on authentic representation, grounded the conversation in the deeper “why” behind community media.
The discussion opened with a grounded look at radio’s long arc in South Africa from early national broadcasting to its role in culture, public information, and democracy over the past 100 years.
Sewlal has researched and curated South African radio history extensively, framing radio as one of the country’s most intimate and enduring public platforms.
“Radio has always been the closest medium to the people, it meets you where you are, in your language and daily life.” Sewlal says.
This traces closely to his broader public work on radio’s social role and its relationship to community identity.
From that historical base, the panel moved to a pivotal shift, the birth of community radio. Sewlal underscored that community radio is not a “side category” of broadcasting, but a critical tier that expanded democratic access to the airwaves. As he has noted in scholarship on the sector: “Community radio is the first tier of broadcasting, that has opened broadcasting to the people.”
Katie Mohamed anchored the “why” with clarity and emotion. She reminded the audience that community stations emerged because people of color were excluded from mainstream media not just as presenters, but as full human stories. Communities needed their own platforms where culture and lived reality weren’t filtered through someone else’s lens.
Katie Mohamed stated that “community radio was born because people of color didn’t have a voice in media we had to create our own spaces for our stories, our languages, our dignity.”
She went further, highlighting a simple but powerful idea about representation, saying that the power of media becomes so important when you see people like you. As that is when you know you belong in the story.
Her point aligns with her wider work on storytelling, identity, and social impact in South Africa.
The panelists converged on a shared definition that community radio stations are not just transmitters but engines of upliftment and social glue. They exist to serve community needs before commercial ones, and to keep local voices visible.
According to Gavin Koppel “Community radio is where local life happens out loud, it’s the bridge between people, problems, and possibility.”
As a broadcaster with decades of experience in South African radio, Gavin framed community stations as a kind of everyday gathering place and a space where listeners aren’t an audience but participants in a shared identity
In the panel’s words and tone, community radio was repeatedly linked to:
· upliftment (helping communities grow and heal),
· inclusivity (making room for all languages and identities),
· connection (reducing isolation),
· and bridging gaps (between generations, cultures, opportunities, and information).
by Pamela Morare