Yumna Moosa – yumna@radioislam.co.za

 17 November 2022 | 2 minute read | 21:00pm CAT

Last week  The Voice of the Cape won the award for the number one community radio station in the Western Cape. News editor, Firooz Sheik, joined Radio Islam International to speak more about their achievement.

The news editor explained, “we get the RAMS ( Radio Audience Measurement Survey) on a regular basis and the latest one was from July 2021 to August 2022, which showed The Voice of the Cape sitting at 185 000 listeners. But that was just taken from one frequency. We broadcast on four frequencies in the Western Cape which is mainly Cape Town and surrounding areas. So the latest figures placed us at the top of other stations in the Western Cape.”

Looking back at the history of the radio station, The Voice of the Cape has been active for 27 years with the idea for the station commencing in the early 1990’s. Members such as Imaam Noor Davids and Imaam Qasim Solomon (former secretary general of the Muslim Judicial Council) had the idea for the advancement of the community and to notifying the community about Islamic news which hadn’t been around at the time. In Ramadan of 1995 the station obtained a special events license, which subsequently led to a temporary broadcast license to broadcast for 24 hours. The station also shared a frequency with Radio786. In June 2002, VOC was finally awarded a four year license which allowed them to obtain their own frequency. Firooz remarks that the rest is history.

“The four frequencies, our app and our technology (are some of our key achievements), especially considering we are a community station. Our streaming figures with our app, and through the website, brings in about 27 000 streamers. And of course our social media coverage is quite huge. We fall behind stations such as SABC, KFM, GoodHope and Heart (which are all popular in the Western Cape). We’re doing well in terms of engagement. The hype is even there for our festival which will take place during the first week of December in the Athlone Stadium”. He further credits that the station keeps a young team in programming and news who are able to keep up-to-date with technology.

Listen to the full interview on the Radio Islam International SoundCloud