Radio Pulpit, ICASA go to High Court

According to a Radio Pulpit spokesperson, the station submitted a review application to the High Court on 7 May 2009 to have the decision of ICASA reviewed or set aside. After the review application was served on ICASA, that body proposed a process be set in motion to settle the matter out of court. This proposal was made on 15 July.

According to the Radio pulpit spokesperson, numerous attempts by the station to get the settlement process in motion were consistently derailed by ICASA and this course of events brought Radio Pulpit to the conclusion that the regulatory body was not acting in good faith.

The essence of the settlement process proposed by ICASA was that ICASA would appoint a two-man committee to reconsider Radio Pulpit's licence application.

Furthermore, ICASA undertook that this committee would consist of board members who had not previously been involved in the consideration of Radio Pulpit's application.

Process seen as flawed

It soon became apparent to the radio station that the proposed ICASA committee members had previously been involved in the case and that they had voted against the approval of the application. Based on this information, the station decided that it could not place its destiny in the hands of a biased committee.

A further condition of ICASA's settlement offer was that, pending the decision of the two-man committee, Radio Pulpit's review application had to be withdrawn on the basis that each party will carry its own costs.

The review application deals with various grounds for review, with particular reference to ICASA's policy that community broadcasters must be geographically bound with regard to the area of their transmissions.

A withdrawal of the review application would effectively deprive the station of the opportunity to obtain a fair and objective ruling from the High Court on the various grounds for review that are dealt with in the review application. It was believed that the two-man committee would not rule against themselves in the process, which was proposed by ICASA.

The ongoing dispute regarding the Western Cape transmitter has been strongly fuelled by what the spokesperson said the station believes are unfounded and erroneous reasons.

The first is that ICASA classified this transmitter as a commercial transmitter. During the past seven years, no commercial broadcaster applied to use this transmitter while the Authority has rejected Radio Pulpit's application three times in the past three years.

Another reason for the denial of the application was the scarcity of frequencies. The station feels this is also an unfounded because it is believed in the broadcasting industry that only three out of the 19 available medium wave frequencies in South Africa are currently being used.