Podcast
Don't Shoot The Messenger
Episodes
How koeksisters and Bible verses can keep women safeYou can only address gender-based violence in the long term through major structural reform. But South Africa’s women don’t have the long term: they need to be safe now. In the fi…
Would you pay for dinner to get told that you’re racist?Would you pay to attend a dinner party at which you’re told that you are probably more racist than you realise? A business established by two women of colour in the USA invites whi…
What Rwanda got right that South Africa didn’tIs there any way to “solve” racism? Are there any means by which we can achieve true racial reconciliation? In this episode, we’re looking at the example of Rwanda, a country torn…
Nobody watches women’s sport - and other mythsWomen’s sport in South Africa is still decades and decades behind the state of play for men. In this episode, we’re talking to Daily Maverick’s resident sports guru and the current…
Social media: How troll tactics are being used for goodSocial media is making us more unhappy, less safe, and in some cases just stupider. This while the power of these websites grows unstoppably: Facebook now has more adherents than C…
The Museum of Toxic StatuesEver since the statue of Cecil John Rhodes was targeted in 2015, statues of apartheid and colonial figures around South Africa have been vandalised. What the hell should we do with…
Why South Africa needs a ‘Don’t Mess With Texas’ campaignSouth Africa is literally running out of places to store its rubbish: the City of Johannesburg has warned that its landfills are almost full. Who wants to live in Trashzania? In th…
Could giving people free money revolutionise SA society?Giving people free money? That might sound like the last thing South Africa can afford. But numerous studies have found that giving people a universal basic income grant leads to t…
What Finland and reverence for teachers can teach SA's school systemWe’re constantly told that education is the single most important service to get right to secure South Africa’s future. In this episode, we’re speaking to an expert on probably the…
The country that turned its crime rate aroundThe latest crime stats prove that the violent crime rates in South Africa are getting worse. In this episode, we hear about a country which turned around its crime situation in the…
SEASON 3: How To Fix It - TrailerIn our third season we're exploring ideas on how to fix things in South Africa. We all know the problems: education, crime, poverty, inequality. Now we want to focus on how they ca…
The plot to blow up Koeberg, Part 2: The man with the bombsAs a young man, Rodney Wilkinson won Springbok colours in fencing - but he would enter the South African history books in a different way. On 16 December 1982, Rodney set four bomb…
The plot to blow up Koeberg, Part 1: The man with the blueprintProfessor Renfrew Christie risked death by hanging to spy on the apartheid government’s power stations - using his doctoral thesis as a pretext to gain access to the plants in orde…
The worst that could happen: How ready are we to face disaster?On 26 September, Cape Town was rocked by tremors after an earthquake occurred off the South African coast. The incident was minor, but it got a lot of people wondering about South…
In the Rough: Golf courses may be South Africa’s most wasteful luxuryWhen legal advocacy group Ndifuna Ukwazi launched a 2019 campaign to have Rondebosch Golf Club land re-allocated for affordable housing, it was revealed that the club was paying le…
QAnon: How the world’s fastest-growing conspiracy theory is spreading to SAOn this week’s show, we’re exploring the global movement called QAnon: a web of conspiracy theories, fantasies and lies which may have started in the head of a former tech journali…
Roll-Call by Emoji: The battle to use technology to save SA’s schoolingA teacher logs on to a WhatsApp group at a specified time. All students who are present send emojis to indicate their readiness. And so class begins. This is what education has lo…
Can life be normal after kidnapping by Al-Qaeda?Stephen McGown is regarded as Al-Qaeda’s longest surviving hostage. Since his release in 2017, he has been putting his life back together, and is working on a book about his experi…
Where are South Africa’s superheroes?Your local bookstore will definitely stock ‘Harry Potter’, but when it comes to South African kids’ books featuring children of colour, all bets are off. The local publishing indus…
Puff & Pass: The legal limbo of SA’s marijuana lawsSince a March 2017 Western Cape High Court ruling, you can’t be arrested for smoking marijuana within your own home in South Africa. But that doesn’t mean marijuana is legal: you s…
