Libby Lloyd, champion of independent and open airwaves 1961-2018
● Libby Lloyd, who has died in Johannesburg at the age of 56, played a key role in building the framework for independent broadcast media in postapartheid South Africa.
She understood that after the “struggle” was won and the cheering was over, democracy would depend on it, not least because radio was the only source of news for most of the population.
To this end she became an expert in broadcast policy and legislation, as well as a highly effective negotiator. She was a pioneer of broadcast regulation in the new era and understood more than most the important role of community radio in building and sustaining democracy.
As the founding CEO of the Media Development and Diversity Agency, Lloyd created an enabling environment for the community media sector. She was largely responsible for the proliferation of independent community radio stations, which allowed those who had been marginalised to be heard for the first time.
In the three years she was at the helm, from 2003 to 2006, more than R20million in grants was allocated to these stations.
During the period she was in charge, the agency maintained an unbroken record of clean audits, testament to the robust governance structures she and her management team set up.
She was a member of the ANC’s national executive committee subcommittee on communications, and she served as a councillor at both the Independent Communications
Authority of South Africa and its predecessor, the Independent Broadcasting Authority. She was recently on the ministerial panel of experts for the national integrated information and communications technology policy process.
Lloyd was born in what was then Salisbury, Rhodesia, on October 17 1961. In 1967 the family moved to Johannesburg, and then to the Eastern Cape. She was a boarder at Queenstown Girls’ High, where she matriculated.
She studied speech therapy at the University of Cape Town for a year, but always wanted to be a journalist. She spent three years studying journalism at Durban Technical College.
She worked on newspapers in the region before moving to Johannesburg, where she worked as a news reporter for Capital Radio.
She joined the Association for Democratic Journalists and was jailed for protesting against the banning of the Weekly Mail.
She began playing a more activist role in issues of social justice, including gender issues, and became active in progressive politics, which led her to an involvement with the ANC underground.
In 1989 she organised a delegation of South African media activists who were part of the Mass Democratic Movement to travel to Canada to participate in a course with an ANC delegation from Radio Freedom in Lusaka.
There she met Joe Mjwara, who had been with the ANC in exile since 1981. When he returned to South Africa in 1992 they formed a relationship and had a daughter, Sophie. It didn’t last and Lloyd combined her hectic schedule with being a single mother with little time and little money.
Her parlous finances were not helped by the fact that the ANC prevailed on her to do a lot of policy work for it free of charge.
She spent a large chunk of her meagre earnings on paying for a child minder to accompany her and Sophie on the frequent trips that her work for Icasa and other organisations necessitated.
In spite of her best efforts not to be an absentee parent, this was often unavoidable.
A story has it that when Sophie was four she bumped into then Icasa chairman Mandla Langa while her mother was doing a typically hurried shop at Pick n Pay, and told him: “I also need to see my mother.”
In 2009 Lloyd was appointed to the interim board of the SABC. She was nominated for the permanent board but turned it down because she felt it would conflict with the other work she was doing.
Lloyd, who was diagnosed with oral cancer in August 2016, is survived by Sophie.
She was a pioneer of broadcast regulation in the new era and understood more than most the important role of community radio in building and sustaining democracy