Concerned leaders have their say
Sunil Brijmohan (councillor): Is this (90-10 policy) not a ploy to bring down the Indian community? Lotus FM, to me, is a glue in the Indian community. It covers all aspects, whether we are Gujarati, Hindi-speaking, or come from the Tamil background... This is a well-orchestrated plan to silence us in the Indian community.
Selvan Govender (member of the World Saiva Council of SA in Durban): The largest population of Indians outside of India is in South Africa and Hlaudi (Motsoeneng) needs to respect that.
Seelan Pather (Natal Tamil Vedic Society Trust): The issue (90-10 policy) and effect it has had in society shows the short-sightedness in terms of the leadership of the SABC not anticipating what would happen. The decision disrespects us completely... We have a rightful place in this country. We need to establish Indian identity with pride.
Sandy Kalyan (DA MP): The licence for Lotus FM was given with a specific intent to serve the Indian community... We need to look at the conditions under which the licence was granted.
Vishal Maharaj (CEO MegaZone Radio): With the split, we have seen a large stream of people tune into our Bollywood channel. It shows our people are missing out on the Bollywood music they were used to previously. Since October we have over 300 000 listeners. It shows what Lotus FM has lost.
George Mari
(DA MPL): The music played now does not resonate in the Indian mind. If we lose this (Lotus FM), we lose our culture. We must save Lotus as a station that serves the Indian community.
Mickey Chetty (property consultant): I am very disappointed. You (people) had the opportunity of confronting the then COO (chief operating officer) of the SABC, who was on a roadshow and who was at The Playhouse. The only people who were there were local artists. There was a good opportunity but you missed it and now we are here.
In South Africa, like any other country, the only time an artist makes money is if he is contracted to a recording studio or a recording company. In South Africa, the black artists and English artists make thousands of rand not only because the recording companies are selling their records in South Africa, but they are promoting that music throughout Africa because people appreciate that particular kind of music.
But with Indians, we are unique. We have just a few supporters in Durban and other provinces and nobody else wants to listen to our music, so we are quite content for Lotus to play our music.
No recording company will want to contract any Indian artist because they have no sales for these records.
To make it worse, we have recording companies here who instead of buying records and selling them, buy one, and technology helps them.
They make copies, pirate copies, and they sell and our poor people buy them. It’s the same with DVDs.