‘Racist’ radio shut in S. African all-white town

A pirate radio station in South Africa’s last all-white enclave that spouted racist views has been kicked off the air for broadcasting without a licence, communications watchdog ICASA said on Tuesday. Radio Club 100, which broadcast exclusively for the private white hamlet of Orania, on the edge of the semi-arid Karoo region, was shut down after ICASA found it was operating without a licence, the regulator said. The decision to confiscate the station’s equipment and pursue legal action had nothing to do with its content, but ICASA said it had been broadcasting racist and right-wing views.

‘‘Our monitors were of the view that it was a racist-based station and very right wing,’’ said Lydia de Souza, ICASA senior manager of broadcast licensing, monitoring and compliance.‘‘Since the station was run by pirates, they probably only covered Orania and catered to the people who live there.’’

Fearful that majority black rule would threaten their way of life, a handful of white descendents of Dutch and French settlers bought an entire town in the early 1990s to try to build their dream of a white-only Afrikaner homeland.Orania launched its own currency last year but the government has refused to grant it the autonomy it seeks. Many see it as a last vestige of apartheid-era thinking, more than a decade after the end of white rule. REUTERS