Deputy Minister to Meet Eastern Cape Leaders on Local Media Support

Kenny Morolong, Deputy Minister of Communications, will sit down with the Eastern Cape Provincial Executive Council on Thursday to work through how government talks to ordinary residents, how South Africa presents itself to the world, and what concrete support reaches local media outlets in the province.

For community media operators and residents who rely on local journalism, that last point carries the most immediate weight. The revised Government Communication Policy commits government to directing 30 percent of its advertising spend toward small commercial and community media outlets. That funding pledge is not a vague aspiration. It is written into the policy as a structural reordering of how government money flows to the media landscape, and it is one of the central items on Thursday’s agenda.

The Eastern Cape meeting is the latest stop in a nationwide series of provincial engagements designed to roll out the revised policy across the country. Morolong has already held similar sessions in North West, Free State, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal, each one focused on tightening how different levels of government coordinate their messaging and work together on communication strategy.

At the KwaZulu-Natal session earlier this month, Morolong was direct about what the policy change means in practice. “We have agreed that communication can no longer be an afterthought. It is an important function that must be enhanced through funding,” he told that gathering. The remark signals a deliberate shift in priorities, not a rhetorical one.

The Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) has framed the Eastern Cape engagement around three core areas: coordination between government agencies, nation-branding work that shapes South Africa’s image at home and abroad, and direct support for community media operating in the province. Morolong’s delegation will include representatives from the GCIS itself, the Media Development and Diversity Agency (MDDA), and Brand South Africa, a multi-agency lineup that reflects how broadly the revised policy reaches.

Each province brings a different media landscape and different community needs. The Eastern Cape is no exception, and those differences are precisely why these face-to-face conversations between national and provincial officials matter. The GCIS has noted encouraging momentum in implementing the policy’s objectives so far, and the provincial visits serve both as a communication tool and as a feedback mechanism, letting national government hear how the policy is actually landing on the ground.

By contrast with earlier, more centralized approaches to government communication, the revised policy is built around coordination across national, provincial and local spheres simultaneously. Thursday’s session will test how that coordination translates into concrete decisions at the provincial level, where the community media support provisions will ultimately take effect for the outlets and audiences they are meant to reach.

The full text of the revised Government Communication Policy is available at https://www.sanews.gov.za/south-africa/morolong-engage-eastern-cape-provincial-executive-council.

Whether the 30 percent advertising commitment produces measurable change for community media in the Eastern Cape, and how quickly, is the question that Thursday’s meeting begins to answer.