Don't Shoot The Messenger

How koeksisters and Bible verses can keep women safe

You 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 final episode of our third season, we’re talking to a Cape Flats activist who used the sale of koeksisters…

9 May 2021 21 min

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 white women to do just that - and hear some hard truths. In this episode, we’re talking…

2 May 2021 21 min

What Rwanda got right that South Africa didn’t

Is 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 apart by deadly ethnic divisions in the 1990s, whose government argues it has largely achieved national peace post…

25 Apr 2021 22 min

Nobody watches women’s sport - and other myths

Women’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 Springbok women’s rugby coach, exploring how the USA managed to create the world’s most successful women’s soccer industry within…

18 Apr 2021 24 min

Social media: How troll tactics are being used for good

Social 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 Christianity. In this episode we’re taking on just two aspects of the social media problem: the way it spreads fake…

11 Apr 2021 24 min

The Museum of Toxic Statues

Ever 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 them? In this episode, we’re asking what the best way is for South Africa to grapple with the past…

4 Apr 2021 24 min

Why South Africa needs a ‘Don’t Mess With Texas’ campaign

South 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 this episode, we are taking on the country’s littering epidemic. We’re talking to an academic and an activist who…

21 Mar 2021 20 min

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 the funds being used in productive ways which both improve people’s quality of life and boost the economy more widely…

14 Mar 2021 25 min

What Finland and reverence for teachers can teach SA's school system

We’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 world’s most respected school system, chatting to someone who toured schools all around South Africa to get a sense of…

7 Mar 2021 21 min

The country that turned its crime rate around

The 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 90s, talk to a woman with a simple but brilliant solution to keep people safer in high crime…

28 Feb 2021 24 min

SEASON 3: How To Fix It - Trailer

In 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 can overcome, looking at innovative local solutions and answers that have worked elsewhere in the world. Join us…

22 Feb 2021 1 min

The plot to blow up Koeberg, Part 2: The man with the bombs

As 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 bombs inside the Koeberg nuclear power station in Cape Town. They were timed to explode 24 hours later…

25 Oct 2020 23 min

The plot to blow up Koeberg, Part 1: The man with the blueprint

Professor 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 order to gather intel. He became South Africa’s pioneering nuclear whistleblower. In this week’s episode, he explains how he wrote…

18 Oct 2020 17 min

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 Africa’s preparedness in the event of a(nother) major disaster. In this episode, we speak to a disaster management…

11 Oct 2020 23 min

In the Rough: Golf courses may be South Africa’s most wasteful luxury

When 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 less than R1000 rent a year for hectares of public land. In this episode, we take a look at those crazy leases…

4 Oct 2020 22 min

QAnon: How the world’s fastest-growing conspiracy theory is spreading to SA

On 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 journalist from Johannesburg, but which has spread to the United States Congress and the White House. And we’re looking at…

27 Sep 2020 22 min

Roll-Call by Emoji: The battle to use technology to save SA’s schooling

A 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 looked like in some parts of South Africa during the Covid-19 lockdown, with teachers, NGOs and businesses scrambling…

20 Sep 2020 21 min

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 experience. In this episode, he discusses the profound strangeness of trying to readjust to normal life after losing 6 years…

13 Sep 2020 17 min

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 industry admits there’s a big problem - but just how big, nobody knows. In this episode, we speak to local writers Buhle…

6 Sep 2020 20 min

Puff & Pass: The legal limbo of SA’s marijuana laws

Since 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 still can’t buy it or sell it anywhere. It’s also been totally unclear how much weed you’re allowed to…

30 Aug 2020 22 min