It is time to say what everyone in Soweto already whispers in their homes, taxis, shebeens, at street corners, and in WhatsApp groups: Jozi FM, the voice that was born with our democracy, is dying a slow death.
And it is not dying because of government, or because of commercial competition, or because community radio space is tough.
It is dying because two people – or two factions built around two people – have decided the station belongs to them.
For almost 10 years JoziFM has been at war with itself.
On one side is a board, led by a chairperson who has overstayed any democratic notion of community tenure.
On the other side is a CEO (chief executive officer) who behaves like a political principal, rather than an employee.
Both have held parallel media conferences in the past years.
Both have issued press statements denouncing the other as illegitimate.
For the umpteenth time, the board last week announced it had fired the CEO and appointed a new one.
Over two months ago the CEO announced he had appointed a new board.
In any other sector, this would be comedy. In Soweto, where this station is supposed to be a community lifeline, it is tragedy.
At the centre of this circus is more than R30 million that remains unaccounted for.
That is not a rumour from the street.
It is the figure that keeps coming up in their own accusations against each other.
Around 2014, the National Lottery Board gave the JoziFM board a R34.8 million grant, ostensibly to run the affairs of the station.
The matter of the money is now a subject of the forensic investigation by the Specialised Commercial Crimes Unit.
This is what happens when community media is left to become a personal fiefdom.
ICASA (the Independent Communications Authority of SA) is the regulator and guardian of community media.
The authority’s licence conditions are clear: boards must be representative, must have annual general meetings (AGMs), must rotate, must submit audited financials.
The regulator for years has watched this slow-motion collapse and has issued no decisive sanction, no administrator, no public hearing in Soweto that ordinary listeners can attend.
That silence has emboldened both sides. When there is no referee, both teams start playing with their hands.
Let us be blunt: both the chair and the CEO must go.
Not one. Both. First, the chair.
Community boards are not traditional councils of elders where you sit for life. Best practice across the world is two terms maximum.
JoziFM’s current board leadership has lost any claim to community legitimacy.
It has not held a credible, independently audited AGM in years.
It does not represent the diversity of Soweto in 2026 – the youth who make TikTok content, the women running stokvels and small businesses, the churches, the schools, the taxi associations.
A board that has overstayed its welcome stops governing and starts guarding.
It guards access to tenders, to appointment letters, to the petty power of deciding who gets a breakfast show.
That is what we are seeing at JoziFM.
Second, the CEO. A CEO in community radio is not a station owner.
He is an employee of the community, hired to execute strategy.
When a CEO starts appointing his own board, we have left governance and entered capture.
That is not leadership; it is entrenchment.
A CEO who cannot produce clean audits for R30 million, who fights the board in public instead of in a boardroom, who uses the airwaves and press conferences to wage personal battles, has lost the moral authority to lead a single presenter, let alone a station that claims to speak for two million people.
Their co-existence – both the chair and CEO – is toxic because it has taught every staff member that loyalty is more important than talent.
Young presenters have told me they are asked: “Are you with the board or are you with the CEO?”
That is not a newsroom.
That is a faction. No creative person can work under those conditions.
The result is on air every day – tired programming, repeats, no investigative reporting on Soweto issues like housing, crime, or service delivery, because the real investigative story is inside the Khaya Centre building in Dube, Soweto.
JoziFM does not need a new CEO appointed by the old board, or a new board appointed by the old CEO.
It needs both to resign, with immediate effect, and to subject themselves to an independent forensic audit.
Soweto deserves better than this endless soap opera. JoziFM was started in 1995 to give a voice to people who were voiceless under apartheid.
Three decades later, two small groups have made the station voiceless again – not because they are censored, but because they are fighting over the microphone while the community is trying to speak.
If the chair and the CEO truly love JoziFM as much as they claim in their competing press releases, they will prove it by leaving.
The station will survive them. It may not survive another year of them.
*Nhlanhla Mbatha is an independent current affairs analyst. The views expressed by Nhlanhla Mbatha are not necessarily those of The Bulrushes
