Environment

No racist bunkum

DTE Staff

Radio Station South Africa

It was a sinister votary of racism. Not any more. South Africa's all-white enclave town of Orania has lost its radio station: Radio Klub 100. Lydia de Souza, senior manager of broadcast licensing, monitoring and compliance, Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (icasa), said the monitors who surveyed the station found it "very racist". icasa says, however, that it was the lack of a licence, rather than the content of its broadcasts, that prompted the closure of the station.

Fearful that majority rule would threaten their way of life, a few white descendents of Dutch and French settlers bought an entire town in the semi-arid Northern Cape in the early 1990s. Orania launched its own currency last year but the government has refused to grant it the autonomy it seeks.