Community involvement cannot sit on the margins of a media business

When more than a million people give a media brand their attention, and so many of them regard radio as a trusted source, that is an enormous privilege. But privilege comes with responsibility. You cannot ask a community for its trust, attention and loyalty every day and regard that relationship as purely transactional.

I believe that trust carries a responsibility to show up for the communities that make our station relevant. It is a responsibility that has become harder to ignore as media brands compete not only for airtime and attention, but for something far scarcer: genuine belief that they are on the side of the people who listen to them.

This belief sits at the heart of Kaya Cares, our community impact platform. Through it, we seek to turn our relationship with our audience into meaningful action and demonstrate corporate citizenship in practice.

Trust that is earned

BrandMapp’s 2026 Kaya 959 Audience Profiler estimates our national holistic audience at more than 1.6 million people. Seventy per cent of Kaya listeners tune into radio every day, compared with 56% of other Gauteng radio listeners. Perhaps more significantly, 58% of Kaya listeners say they trust radio as a news source, making it their most trusted medium and putting it comfortably ahead of television, newspapers and websites.

That level of trust is not something we take lightly. Nor do we regard it as static. An audience of this size and loyalty is sustained through relevance and relevance has to be re-earned continually, in step with the pressures our audience is living through.

We don’t need media institutions that simply describe what is going wrong. At a time of deep economic pressure, unemployment, crime and declining trust, organisations with the power to reach millions of people also have a responsibility to use that influence to help strengthen the communities from which they derive their relevance.

Ipsos research continues to show that South Africans are deeply concerned about issues including corruption, unemployment, crime and economic insecurity, while the Edelman Trust Barometer points to growing expectations that businesses should play a constructive role in society.

Media companies are not exempt from that expectation. Arguably, we carry an even greater responsibility because we hold the platforms through which those concerns are aired, debated and, ideally, acted upon.

Being accountable to an audience

For me, this reinforces an important principle: being a media organisation is about more than having an audience. It is about being accountable to that audience.

That accountability also extends outward into the relationships we build with the brands and businesses that advertise on our platforms. It is not enough for Kaya 959 to understand its own responsibility to listeners; we also have a role to play in helping our business partners build more meaningful relationships with those same audiences.

Our understanding of our community, its culture and its interests enables brands to move beyond simply reaching consumers. It allows them to create experiences, conversations and initiatives that have genuine relevance in listeners’ lives. Our listeners are telling us that what we talk about matters and how we show up for their communities matters. Kaya Cares is about turning that listening into action.

Not a solution, but a contribution

We do not position Kaya Cares as the solution to every challenge. No media organisation can solve unemployment, inequality or crime on its own. Our role is to use the assets we do have – our voice, our reach, our platforms and, importantly, the trust we have built with our audience – to help create opportunities for meaningful change.

We can connect people who can make a difference, amplify work that deserves attention, open doors and bring people together. Sometimes the most valuable thing a media organisation can offer is its voice, its reach and the trust people place in it.

Kaya Cares is not a marketing exercise dressed up as social investment. It is an honest acknowledgement of what a media brand can realistically offer: convening power, visibility for causes and people who might otherwise struggle to be heard and a platform that can shift the way a community sees its own possibilities.

Our commitment is to ensuring that community involvement does not sit on the margins of the Kaya 959 brand, but remains part of how we understand our role in society and how we help our partners participate meaningfully in the lives of the people they seek to serve. The success of our brand is measured by whether our community believes that we listen to them.

By Dimakatso Manganyi, HR Manager and Corporate Social Investment Lead at Kaya 959