By OBAKENG MAJE
16 April 2025- Community media continue to serve as a vital tool for local information sharing, community engagement and empowerment, often acting as an alternative to public and commercial media. It fosters localism, storytelling, empowerment and diverse participation, enabling communities to address local issues, raise awareness, and foster a sense of belonging.
This was shared by the Deputy Minister in the Presidency, Kenny Morolong during his engagement with community and small commercial media in Taung on Monday. Morolong engaged with community and small commercial media house representatives to reflect on their challenges.
“The meeting with community and small commercial media, particularly in Taung, was a resounding success. We met inter alia to reflect on challenges confronting community or small commercial media.
“We were joined by the Greater Taung Local Municipality mayor, Tumisang Gaoraelwe, who made an insightful reflection of the state of the community media in Taung,” he said.
Morolong further said they also had the pleasure of having the Media Development and Diversity Agency (MDDA) in our midst as the entity responsible for the promotion and support of the community and small commercial media. He said the aftermath of this engagement will result in a workshop that will take place in six weeks, where all community and small commercial media houses will gather under one roof in the district to reflect on the state of the community media.
“We will discuss the funding models of community and small commercial media and all interventions that will ensure that community media as an entity, performs optimally.
“We are impressed with the feedback we received from different media house representatives. The first impression is that, media houses continue to promote local content through reporting,” said Morolong.
Meanwhile, the Greater Taung Local Municipality (GTLM) mayor, Tumisang Gaoraelwe shared the same sentiments. Gaoraelwe said they were grateful as the municipality to form part of the engagement.
“Collectively, we paved the way forward in order to address their challenges. We have said on record that we are going to assist these media houses in order for them to encapsulate a forum that will be under the Office of the Mayor.
“We are going to assist them in terms of linking them with necessary departments and arm of government, including assisting them financially to facilitate their day-to-day business,” he said.
The Guardian 