Ham radio turns 100 in South Africa

The South African Radio League (Sarl) wants to broaden its contribution to the growth of amateur radio in sub-Saharan Africa as the organisation celebrates its centenary next month.

Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, is a hobby that involves experimenting with radio frequencies, building antennae and participating in radio contests. Amateur radio enthusiasts, also known as “hams”, play a key role by supporting emergency services with communications in disaster scenarios.

“It’s a bit of a sad story that you’ve got amateur radio activity in Southern Africa that’s mainly in Namibia and South Africa but not much elsewhere in Africa. It’s slowly taking off in Mozambique and it’s very small in Tanzania,” said Sarl president Nico van Rensburg in an interview with TechCentral.

“In the northern parts of Africa – Egypt and Nigeria and other countries there – you have national bodies and far more activity. But you have this middle part of Africa where there is nothing, absolutely nothing.”

Sarl was formed in 1925 to represent the interests of radio amateurs, and one of its first key contributions to the field was to lobby for spectrum to be set aside for hams to experiment with. Today, communications regulator Icasa manages spectrum allocations for amateur radio enthusiasts through a licencing regime that requires hams to obtain an amateur broadcasting licence. Sarl administers the exam hams are required to take before obtaining a licence and also provides training to aspiring amateurs.

Emergency response

There is a direct correlation between the number of hams in a country and its ability to recover in times of distress. When floods ravaged parts of KwaZulu-Natal in April 2022, hams set up emergency radio communication stations at relief centres to help displaced residents, especially the elderly, reconnect with their loved ones. According to Brian Jacobs, national director at Hamnet, the emergency communications wing of Sarl, hams often happen to be the first responders in emergencies, allowing them to provide response teams and relief organisations a situational overview that informs the type of equipment needed on the ground.

“Normally what happens when we have an emergency, and it even happens when we have massive sports events, is that the cellphone towers in the area become overloaded and fail. Once those start failing, other systems start failing as well. We have memoranda of understanding with various organisations, including the government, where we assist with communication. We provide what we call start-up communications: when everything fails in an area, we go in – normally for a period of 48 to 72 hours – until all the commercial communications systems can be brought back online,” said Jacobs.

The training hams go through to prepare for high-pressure scenarios takes various forms, including formal study and practical experiments. Contests between amateurs in the same club or between clubs is one of Sarl’s key engagement drivers, providing hams with the opportunity to use their skills in real-world scenarios while socialising with likeminded individuals.

Despite developing the required skills, not all Sarl members choose to participate in Hamnet’s emergency communications activities. However, hams from different teams co-ordinate during contests like balloon launches, where one team focuses on the launch itself – and the experiment being sent up into the atmosphere – and Hamnet practices its skills by recovering the beacons attached to each balloon. Beacon recovery is critical in search-and-rescue operations.

Sarl also runs a youth programme called ZU Call Sign, which teaches radio-related skills to teenagers between the ages of 12 and 20. Just like their adult counterparts, ZU Call Sign members also need to pass an exam to get their amateur radio licences. The frequencies they are assigned are limited so they cannot broadcast beyond South Africa’s borders.

Youth are afforded opportunities for international exposure through contests and camps runs by the International Amateur Radio Union, of which Sarl is a member organisation.

Guy Eales, who serves as Sarl’s vice president and runs the ZU Call Sign programme, said many of the youngsters use the experience gained to build meaningful careers in science and technology.

“When we sit and play around with amateur radio, it is very complementary to the electronics syllabus they teach in schools. In amateur radio, we show what things like amplitude and frequency look like in a practical setting, and to my mind that brings electronics to life. We are doing Stem (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), we are not just talking about it, so the kids learn practical skills that will prepare them for a career,” said Eales.

Sarl’s experiments with various forms of radio technology allow the organisation and its members to become key contributors to industry. Satellite tracking is a traditional amateur radio activity, allowing hams to communicate with their counterparts in other parts of the world when a satellite is in range. The first satellite dedicated to amateur radio activity, called Oscar 1 (Orbiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio) was launched by the US in 1961.

Oscar and Sputnik

Hans van de Groenendaal, a Sarl hall of famer who has been a member of the organisation since 1959, recalled tracking Oscar 1 and the Russian Sputnik 1 satellite from his mother’s kitchen as a teenager.

“Oscar 1 was launched four years after the Russians beat the US to space. When I received the Sputnik signal I was still a youngster in high school. When I came home and tuned into the 20MHz band and heard that sound, it was really exciting. We didn’t have any handheld radios, so I called my friends over to my house – the satellite always came over at three o’clock in the afternoon.

“I had to fight with my mother because at 3pm, there was a programme on Springbok Radio called Liefdeslied and there was no woman in this country who didn’t want to listen to that story.”

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Van de Groenendaal went on to become a key role player in the launch of two satellites originating from South Africa, SunSat and SumbandilaSat. Launched from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in February 1999, SunSat was the first satellite designed and manufactured in South Africa. The unit was built by postgraduate engineering students at the University of Stellenbosch. Van de Groenendaal’s contributions to the project later earned him an honorary degree in engineering from the university. SunSat was used extensively by US schools to teach students about satellite technology, he said.

Protecting the spectrum allocated to amateur radio and emergency services from interference and cannibalisation by other industries is one of Sarl’s main responsibilities. However, hams also make contributions to the policy and regulatory space, working closely with Icasa, usually in an advisory capacity, to shape the regulations moving the industry forward. One of the ways Sarl provides the expertise of its members is by experimenting, testing and reporting on new technologies and how they make use of radio frequency spectrum.

Replicating the success amateur radio has had through Sarl in South Africa over the last 100 years in less developed parts of Africa comes with many challenges, funding being key among them. Political will, or the lack thereof, is oftentimes a barrier, too.

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Years of disastrous flooding, along with post-election riots in 2024, have made the development of a reliable emergency communications system a priority for the Mozambican government, where amateur radio has become an important component of its disaster management strategy. Sarl hall of famer and lifelong ham Chris Turner has moved to the country to lend his expertise.

“I have been assisting … to establish amateur radio stations in all the major towns [in Mozambique]. Their main objective is train radio amateurs so that they have a network of skilled and experienced radio operators in times of natural disaster,” said Turner.  – © 2025 NewsCentral Media

• Main image: South African amateur radio enthusiasts building a radio antenna

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