Is African radio a medium for the devil?
By Charles Onyango-Obbo
Posted Saturday, April 12 2014 at 13:07
In Summary
Twenty years later, it seems we are all still paying for the original
Radio Mille Collines sin. To reassure jittery media regulators, an
African radio station somewhere will need to do good at a dramatic
level that bests the harm it caused in the Rwanda genocide. And soon
too.
Rwanda is observing the 20th commemoration of the 1994 genocide, in
which nearly one million Tutsi and opposition Hutus were slaughtered.
The Rwanda genocide was horrific, but it was not exactly new. Human
beings have been murdering each other on a genocidal scale since at
least the 13th century, when the Mongols sacked Baghdad.
In Africa, though, in 1994, Rwanda first brought to public attention,
in a very deadly way, the twin brothers of "hate speech" and "hate
radio." Until then we mostly talked of "tribal hatred" and "tribal
killings" in Africa.
In a macabre sort of way, therefore, the Rwanda genocide rescued the
language about mass murder in Africa from its narrow anthropological
prison. The star of this grim drama was the government-backed Radio
Mille Collines.
There is perhaps no better way for those who didn't live it, to
understand what exactly hate radio did there than to watch the
documentary
Shake Hands With the Devil by the Canadian Gen Romeo Dallaire, who led
Unamir, the hapless UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda.
Based on real footage from the genocide period, a part of it captures
the hate radio messages directing machete- and-club armed gangs to the
plantations and bushes where the Tutsi were hiding.
What Radio Mille Collines did in Rwanda, settled once and for all the
issue that had been debated in journalism scholarship for years, about
whether media was actually effective in mobilising listeners toward
certain goals.
Because the Rwanda genocide happened just as Africa was beginning to
liberalise its airwaves, the hate radio phenomenon heavily influenced
broadcast regulation and licencing rules elsewhere on the continent.
Since then, be it in the conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of
Congo, or the Kenya election of December 2007, the role of radio in
merchandising hate has given rise to the sense that it is an evil
medium.
The Internet can be deadly, yes, but it is also very effective in
mobilising for good as East Africans saw in the Kenya post-election
violence in 2008, and after the Westgate Mall terror attack last
September.
TV and newspapers can be divisive too, but they have also proved
powerful platforms in rallying troubled countries to come together and
do good.
So does the devil live in African radio? No, obviously. There are many
views about why radio is particularly suited to mobilising for mass
murder. One that is a little racist argues that the African is an oral
creature, not a reading animal.
A good radio presenter thus simultaneously draws from the traditional
drum, the fables of our societies, and the tales of our grandparents,
and touches us deep where no other medium can go.
Secondly, radio is more democratic. It doesn't have the snobbery of
newspapers and TV (where you have to be either very clever, or if you
are of average talent then photogenic and well spoken, to succeed on
the tube). Many radio presenters are DJs, comedians, beloved drunks,
chaps with a man-on-the-street touch who connect with listeners at a
visceral level.
Twenty years later, it seems we are all still paying for the original
Radio Mille Collines sin. To reassure jittery media regulators, an
African radio station somewhere will need to do good at a dramatic
level that bests the harm it caused in the Rwanda genocide. And soon
too.
http://www.google.ca/gwt/x?gl=CA&u=http://www.africapressreview.com/link-a%3Fid_syndic_article%3D194812&hl=en-CA&ei=VtBJU6f4F4-emQfHhIDIDw&wsc=vb
--
SIBOMANA Jean Bosco
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