South Africans may be having a high cellphone penetration but that does not instantly translate to mean that communication is accessible to the ordinary citizen.
A young Grahamstown resident browsing a cellphone
According to a brief survey conducted by the Chair of Media and information society at Rhodes University school of journalism in about 100 Grahamstown homes and residents in Joza township in the end of 2009, it was discovered that although a lot of people have access to mobile handsets, they seriously cannot afford airtime, receive bad service and technical quality sound. This also impacts negatively in their lives.
Almost 85% of the survey respondents said they use a free 10 letter word customisation call ‘please call me’ offererd by the mobile service providers or dial and drop for someone to call back. Other than that, their cellphones work as a clock, a receiver handset with minimal or no outgoing calls at all.
Plz call me
Sebenzile Sankobe , a local resident and member of the Unemployed People’s Movement said,
”the inability to comunicate ‘like a disease that will disable you to reach a certain point in life because once you miss some opportunities in life they will never come back at least for as long as you live”.
