People ask us for "the frequency" of a station as though each one has a single number. Most do not. A national broadcaster in South Africa can sit on thirty or more frequencies, and the number that works in Polokwane will get you silence, or a different station entirely, in Gqeberha. This guide explains why, because once you understand it the frequency guide becomes much easier to use.
One station, many transmitters
FM radio travels roughly line-of-sight. A single transmitter covers a city and its surrounds, and then the signal is gone. To cover a province — never mind a country — a broadcaster needs a chain of transmitters, and each one is licensed on its own frequency so that neighbouring sites do not interfere with each other.
That is why an SABC language service will publish a list of twenty or sixty towns, each with its own number. The station is the same; only the transmitter changes. When you move between towns on a long drive, you are not losing the station, you are driving out of one transmitter's range and into the next one's.
The same number is not the same station
Because frequencies are reused across the country wherever the transmitters are far enough apart, a number on its own means nothing without a place attached to it. This is the single most common mistake in radio listings, and it is why every frequency on this site is stored with the town it belongs to rather than as a bare number.
FM, AM and what is actually on them
South African FM broadcasting occupies 87.5 to 108 MHz, which is where almost everything you listen to lives. The AM or medium-wave band is much older and much emptier now, but it has not gone away: a handful of stations still use it, and because AM travels far further than FM at night, those signals can turn up hundreds of kilometres from the transmitter. If a station's listing here shows a number in the hundreds rather than the nineties — 567, 828 — that is medium wave, not FM, and you will need a radio that can receive it.
Why our frequencies have a source link
Radio frequency lists circulate online for years after they stop being true. Transmitters move, community licences change hands, and someone's 2012 note becomes the "fact" that everyone copies. We only publish a frequency when the broadcaster themselves publishes it, and each one on this site carries a link to the page where we read it, so you can check us. Where a station does not publish its frequencies, we leave the field empty rather than filling it with something we found elsewhere. An empty field is honest; a wrong number sends someone hunting across the dial.
Finding yours
Start from the frequency guide if you know your town, or from the station's own page if you know what you want to hear. Every station page lists the frequencies we have verified for it, town by town, with the date we checked. If you are near a border between two transmitters you may pick up both, and the stronger one usually wins.
When you cannot get the signal
Terrain beats power in FM. A hill between you and the transmitter will do more damage than distance, which is why reception can be perfect on one side of a valley and hopeless on the other. That is the case for streaming: the internet stream is the same broadcast without the geography. Every station on this site that streams has a play button, and the station list shows which ones are confirmed working.