Community Radio, Women and Family Development Issues in South Africa: An Experiential Study

In South Africa, community radio outlets have adopted the use of indigenous languages to address local issues affecting women and familydevelopment. This study examined how community radio give attention to the perspectives of women on family development issues in South Africa. Furthermore, this study examined the types and direction of radio frames, in the area of indigenous language usage and community radio broadcasting. This study was anchored in framing theory to understand how community radio promotes women’s rights and family development issues. The method adopted for this study was content analysis, which examined the manifest content of radio messages on family development-oriented issues. Also, three hypotheses were tested using Chi-square and Spearman’s Rank Correlation analysis to determine the relationship that exists among variables. The findings of this study showed that that 50% of female listeners were optimistic about the solutions proffered on issues of family development. Also, almost 18% of female listeners were indifferent to solutions proffered on issues of family development. This study concluded that community radio plays an essential role in making large numbers of people aware of their basic rights and duties. Not only limited to solving problems which women face in their day-to-day lives, community radio provides women with a strong platform from which they can freely disseminate their ideas among community members in the best possible manner