International Radio

Since I can't sleep and I am typing away on the computer I am listening to live, streaming radio on the internet. Rather than listen to some local station, I am listening to the morning drive radio show on KFM 94.5 in Cape Town. All the stations I listen to are from English speaking countries; England, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, although South Africa in general and the Cape Town station specifically are multilingual. It is interesting hearing a news and traffic report in Afrikaans. Listening to Afrikaans is almost like listening to the radio itself. Being based on Dutch which is a Germanic language like English there are some similarities. When listening to Afrikaans, it is almost like you are fine tuning to bring the station in clearer. What they are saying feels like it should make sense and you get the impression that in second you will have a clear signal and understand Afrikaans perfectly.

 

Listening to international radio seems to serve two purposes. One it reminds us how similar we really are. These stations have news breaks, traffic reports, dj's joking around, ads for the latest Ford model, movie, or cellphone. Sometimes the prices are given in rands, pounds, or dollars, but it all feels similar. While you hear a lot of the same music listen to here, occasionally you get an artist that is local and you have never heard before.

 

I think that the similarities are very important to realize, but there are definite differences in approach and opinion. This happened while listening to a news report from Johannesburg. The news anchor referred to our current administration as the Bush Regine. I about spit out my soda when I heard that. Regime brings to mind some third world military dictator who has illegally taken over a country. Some that happens in Africa or South America or Thailand (as happened recently). The U.S.? Regine? Surely you jest? You don't really see us that way? Do you? Unfortunately, I think that there is a bit of truth there.