Sunday Scribble #15: Tough week to be a South African

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Bit difficult to “no DNA just RSA” when bearing witness to another round of self-hate running rampant on our streets.

In 2008 – I was a 17 year old who caught snippets of what was going on while driving to school with my dad, listening to John Robbie on his morning radio talk show on 702. It was a story that seemed too far-fetched to be true to my sheltered self. How could not knowing what elbow meant in isiZulu get you hit ot killed? The tattoo of the continent I had just used all my pocket money on (from working activations at robots and inside supermarkets) had just about healed. It was a basic outline of Africa on the middle of my back. That personal commitment to this land of my birth now stood at odds with the collective and rather public self-annexation by the people from its southernmost tip, fuelled by what I could only imagine was extreme desperation and misplaced hate. Then I saw a man who had been set alight on the front page of the Star newspaper when we got home from school. Shit. Is this what Apartheid necklacings were like? The image, with a singular police officer trying, and failing, to put the flames out – cemented a terrifying realisation of who we could become when presented with the opportunity to turn our own dehumanisation onto others. The horror drew ever nearer when one of the camps set up for the displaced was fully operational a few kilometres from home. The white tents stood like stark images I had only ever seen in a National Geographic magazine or the later parts of news bulletins where one or two “African” stories fought over a tight three to five minute slot before the next ad or news block.

In 2015 – I was a newly minted journalist with a camera in my hands. I was working for an international wire at the time. The fact that I could drive and speak the “local languages” was the qualifier for being sent out to cover the latest surge of afrophobia. By this time, I knew a little more thanks to university-level electives in Politics and African History, so I no longer simply called what was going on xenophobia – the targeted nature of attacks on exclusively black and brown people made it difficult to do so. From Snake Park in Soweto, to abandoned wholesalers in the East and hostels in the inner city – I was this time face to face with both the victims and perpetrators of this targeted harassment and violence. It was the first time I got an unwanted advance (read violation) from a drunk protester in the middle of commotion at a hostel. It was also the first time I filmed a grown man crying on camera. He had lost all of his stock, cash and a leg during a violent looting incident at his shop. Technically was still new to operating and using professional video equipment, so he was slightly skew and the hue more pink than could be used in that particular package of rushes. But some creative editing allowed me to at least use his cracking voice in a longer piece a few days on when the breaking news of it all had settled.

In 2026 – I was sitting with a group of women at our monthly book club meeting a few days prior to June 30, 2026. We were reading Octavia Butler’s Kindred, so a heavy afternoon was guaranteed. Once we had shared our frustrations, sorrows and incredulities over the atrocities of slavery we had encountered in its pages, conversation turned to the elephant-shaped ‘deadline’ in the room called South Africa. Online conversation/discourse said that it wasn’t the place of the educated, clever blacks in the middle class to opine on the matter at all. That we were/are too far removed from the realities on the ground to understand the calls for migrants to leave the country by the end of June, or else. That we were insulated from the growing precarity created by unemployment, inequality, lack of basic services and other socio-economic disparities. And I largely agree with that to be fair, the indignities millions of South Africans have to stomach in the name of survival is a daily struggle I don’t have to contend with. The familiar ‘survivor’s guilt’ that used to settle in when I was a journalist. I got to hop into an air-conditioned vehicle, with the details of just how a person or community had been failed by the system and/or its lieutenants neatly jotted down in a notebook and recorded on camera, leaving them to continue to contend with the untenable, hoping my 60-second insert would do something. So yes, I understood from whence the plea to view the situation through a lens that wasn’t only academic or bureaucratic came from. What I, and my book club, couldn’t understand was the urge to suspend our humanity, to vilify people equally disempowered and disenfranchised by a system that none of have ownership of. Leaving the meeting, again, in warm clothes and air-conditioned cars, what hung over our heads as Pedi, Venda and Tsonga women was which ‘others’ would be deemed different enough for the same collective punishment being doled out this time, because invariably this kind of violence quickly takes on an ethnonational flavour once the more ‘obvious’ targets have been dealt with. Heavy sigh.

1976 at 50: To be known is to be seen

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On the imbalance of knowledge that knocked the wind out of my 13-year-old self.

I recently interviewed Paul Laufer, a photographer and cinematographer from Los Angeles, for a podcast episode. The context of our conversation was a photo essay he put together to commemorate 50 years since June 16, 1976. His body of work contains stills that were published in the Wits University student newspaper of the time, Wits Student, as well as some never before seen images he only recently developed for this exhibition. A fascinating experience for me on multiple fronts – namely, as the current editor of the student publication at Wits, as a former student journalist of selfsame publication (Wits Vuvuzela), as a black woman in South Africa and a person obsessed with history.

One thing kept playing on a loop in my mind after my two-part Zoom call with him. Paul had been sent into Soweto to shoot a quick portrait of Orlando High School principal, Mr Tamsanqa Kambule (whose name is now on a whole building at Wits). A colleague of his had already written the copy about the school and its visionary steward, Paul just had to get the headshot. But upon driving into Soweto, he says everything he had been told about the township began to come apart at the seams as very ordinary scenes unfolded as he drove deeper and deeper into it. So I asked what he knew about Black life at the time and part of his response was, “Black people understood everything about our life, there were no secrets. The reverse was not true. White South Africans had no idea about Black urban life.” In other words, we knew everything about them and they knew nothing, or very little, about us.

It took me back to my own upbringing, and the continual need to explain references – songs, movies, icons, ways of being – and Black life in general to friends, coworkers and acquaintances who lived in insulated silos, with very little knowledge, outside of prejudice, of what was going on outside of their own little bubbles. [Run-on sentence much?!]. As I turned his words over in the days that followed, a very specific moment in primary school came up. A genesis of my understanding of this disparity in experience and exposure.

I went to what is considered a ‘model C’ (formerly reserved for whites only) school in Irene, Pretoria. Our student body was reflective of the ‘new’ and changing South Africa – for context, this would have been between 1998 and 2004. I say new like that because – look around 👀 Anyway. It was in grade seven, the exact date and month elude me. But our arts and culture teacher announced that we would be performing parts of the musical, Sarafina, in our annual school play. There was palpable glee from all the Black learners in the room. Finally, we would get sheet music we didn’t actually need, we already knew the words. We knew who we might want to be cast as. Knew how we would be dressed. How we would move when the accompaniment started. But all of that joy and wonder was quickly tempered when a classmate’s “what’s that?,” followed the announcement. The hours and days that followed revealed that many of our white counterparts had no idea what Sarafina was. I felt somewhat betrayed by it.

That moment was a dream come true for the little drama kid I was at the time. Singing and dancing along to Sarafina songs on stage?! I had practised my whole life for this. See, Sarafina was one of the video tapes my brother watched and wore down from the mid-90s through to the early 2000s. It was on high rotation with our other faves, Coming to America, The Lion King, Titanic, Boys in the Hood and Matilda to name a few. Crazy line-up – I know. But we liked what we liked. Leleti Khumalo as Sarafina was one of the first on-screen characters I could imagine myself as. I wanted to be her. I wanted to dance like her. Be brave like her. Wear my school skirt like she did. Be snarky with boys like she was. Make them weak in the knees like she did. Be knowledgeable like she was. Fight like she did.

So to sit in that classroom and hear some of my peers and friends have no idea what we were talking about left me crestfallen. What alternate universe did they live in that they didn’t sit down as a family on June 16 every year, and remind themselves of what our freedom had cost? Here I was, watching 7deLaan to get better at Afrikaans, reading SaltWater Girl and standing in a Musica to listen to a White Stripes album. Actively imbibing whiteness and white culture at will. Or force really – because again, look around. This imbalance in that moment put me off kilter for a while. It made me question the very nature of my interracial relationships, considering this lopsided perspective of the world and each other. Like you weren’t curious about me at all? Damn Gina (we watched Martin a lot too). In retrospect, I probably owe some of my conscientization to that moment, it made my 13-year-old self open her eyes a bit wider and raise her eyebrows at other and more sinister remnants of the system that showed up in daily life.

Some days later, our teacher (shout out Mrs Eunice Marais) arranged for an in-class screening to bring everyone up to speed before practice started in earnest. Watching a movie in class then, meant watching on a giant black behemoth of a TV unit, over a few days, with discussions and speculations holding you over until the next instalment. The temporary interest quelled my sadness, but the ensuing disinterest in further immersion became somewhat commonplace in the years that followed. But that I got to stand on a stage and sing lead vocals on the Lord’s Prayer and Freedom is Coming? Oh please, fuck them kids.

people power

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After two years of unmet promises of renewal and sweeping change by the elected Government of National Unity (GNU) in South Africa, some citizens are ready to take matters into their own hands to ensure accountable governance. 

A landmark citizens perceptions and expectations survey conducted in 2025, revealed that not only do people know what things are keeping them from accessing their basic needs, but also how they can better wield their individual and collective power to ensure them. 

This episode unpacks the town hall meeting in which the survey findings were discussed and meaningfully built upon to empower participants across the country, ahead of a pivotal local government election in a few months. 

This episode was created in collaboration with PlanAct, Act Ubumbano and the SIVIO Institute. It is another showing shortly production.

Show Notes: 

Host, producer and editor: Pheladi Sethusa

Junior producers: Siyanda Mthethwa and Salim Nkosi 

Guests: Ambani Sandani, Albert Mkhabela, Mondli Mabuza and Eddah Jowah

Sponsors: PlanAct, Act Ubumbano and the SIVIO Institute

Music: The Fight is Over by Kirk Osamayo, Free Music Archive, CC BY; Step by Cyrus, Free Music Archive, CC BY

Resources: 

Literary Postmortem: Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy

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A memoir and memorial all in one.

Nothing could have prepared me for the many lives Arundathi Roy has lived. It’s amazing that she’s still standing, intact, after what can only be described as a relentlessly trying few decades on this earth.

When I first picked up the copy in a bookstore late last year, I thought fondly of her visit to South Africa in 2018. Sitting in a packed auditorium at UCT, I had taken the day off and readied myself to be awed for the two hours we had with her. See, Roy is somewhat of a personal hero to me. Her words and mind have helped me sharpen my own, see and experience the world differently.

Reading this memoir, something she said in that setting, turned over frequently as I realised just how much of her fiction has been informed by her very life.

“Only fiction can tell the truth… it has its ear and heart very close to the ground. Fiction is years of listening and travelling and sweating that experience out in ink.” Roy, August 13, 2018

From the early pages of her latest work, through to the last, some 400 pages later, one can’t help but be stunned and struck by just how closely fiction mimics reality for her. To now know that Velutha from The God of Small Things, was based on a real man, made my whole year. He remains one of my favourite literary characters to date.

What hit me first and has stayed with me since is the indelible marks our parents leave on us. Regardless of their intent, the impact of their actions seeps into our marrow in confounding and lasting ways. Roy’s relationship with her mother comes across as being rooted in something like love, fear, jealousy, disdain and deep affinity all rolled into one. There’s an understanding on the page that this toxic and at times abusive cocktail cannot be survived, at close proximity at least, so Roy and her brother run as soon as they are able, but the taste of it, no matter how bitter, is something that stays with them. Something you crave even, for her anyway.

She manages to write about both her parents with care and admiration, despite the lasting and lingering pain either has inflicted. My assumption around that is the way Roy considers herself an imperfect person, she extends that grace to her close relations with a knowing that in the far reaches of any given relationship, love exists. Which to me harks back to the title of the memoir, Mother Mary Comes to Me, yes, it’s a clever play and shoutout to her obsession with The Beatles, but on a deeper level I think it’s an acknowledgement of the acceptance of what their relationship was and wasn’t (or could not be). That while she describes her mother as her shelter and her storm in the book’s early pages, she has chosen to point us to the house and not just the impending weather. Her mother, like so many others, defied and defeated incredible odds to build the life she did. She fought tooth and nail for everything she had, and therein lies the affinity I pointed to earlier.

It’s an almost unbelievable read, Roy’s life (to me) is characterised by extremes which mould her into the rebel, vagabond, artist and fighter I have come to love. Her convictions are firmly rooted in her experiences and the unwillingness to look away in the face of personal and collective injustice.

As always, with anything she writes, it drips with imagery and perfect prose which force you read and re-read some passages over and over in a desperate attempt to commit their meaning to memory.

I think one would struggle to read this if you aren’t already a fan of her’s or at the very least intrigued by her and her work. If you are, highly recommend it. Best bits below.

the team unpacks on workers day

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As the world observes and celebrates Internaltional Workers Day on May 1, 2026 – we take the opportunity to take stock of the season that was in a bonus episode. Co-producer, Kabir Jugram and host, Pheladi Sethusa speak about the work they do, the origins of ‘nothing works but the people’, reflect on the modern world of work and producing the first season together.

Show Notes:

Host: Pheladi Sethusa

Producer: Kabir Jugram

Editing, writing and sound design: Pheladi Sethusa

Graphic design: Mutsa Katsidzira

Theme music: Trench Work by Ketsa, Free Music Archive, CC BY

Additional music: Hanami Matsuri (花見祭り) by Fabian Measures, Free Music Archive, CC BY

Additional sound: Crying by freesound-community on Pixabay

This series is a Showing Shortly production.

Sources cited in the episode and additional reading:

the thin advice between life and death

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We’ve talked a lot about money this season, everything from how much people make to how they go about making more. In this sixth and final episode for this season, we speak to the people who help you manage the money you do have, safeguard it and grow it – financial advisors. They fall under the financial services sector and their work goes way beyond the sales component most of us are familiar with.

Show Notes:

Host: Pheladi Sethusa

Producer: Kabir Jugram

Editing, writing and sound design: Pheladi Sethusa

Graphic design: Mutsa Katsidzira

Theme music: Trench Work by Ketsa, Free Music Archive, CC BY

Additional music: Work by Steve Combs, Free Music Archive, CC BY

This series is a Showing Shortly production and made possible thanks to grant funding from Africa No Filter and forms part of the Work Reimagined Storylab. Another big thanks to our publishing partners, the Currency News.

Sources cited in the episode:

brewed and battered

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According to research, South Africans are the fifth highest guzzlers of beer in the world, with the average drinker consuming an average of 30 litres of the golden stuff per year. In metros like Joburg, craft beers are slowly overtaking demand. In this episode, we take a slight shift in form to tell a truly extraordinary tale of one brewmaster’s almost 20 year journey in the industry. Someone who has had a hand in creating some of the country’s most renowned craft beers. His special recipes won awards but also led to betrayal more than once, but he refuses to be deterred and has just helped launch a raft of new brews taking the inner city by storm.

Show Notes:

Host: Pheladi Sethusa

Producer: Kabir Jugram

Editing, writing and sound design: Pheladi Sethusa

Graphic design: Mutsa Katsidzira

Theme music: Trench Work by Ketsa, Free Music Archive, CC BY

Additional music: A je to by Paweł Feszczuk, Free Music Archive, CC BY; Reflection Documentary Background by Jake Hunter, Free Music Archive, CC BY

Additional sound effects: Freesound_Community, Pixabay, CC BY

This series is a Showing Shortly production and made possible thanks to grant funding from Africa No Filter and forms part of the Work Reimagined Storylab. Another big thanks to our publishing partners, the Currency News.

Sources cited in the episode:

Sunday Scribble #14: Winning my first ever grant and what it taught me about audacity

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If not me then who?

I say ‘first ever’ because I now know for sure that there will be many more. And that might make me sound a little pompous and overconfident, high on my own supply even, but heck the inverse, worry, insecurity and inhaling the negativity from others’ doubts would be worse, possibly lethal. So I have chosen to lean in to my own brand of ego-boosting self-assuredness and brazen audacity.

I remember going off on a bit of a tangent about audacity in front my journalism class last year. It was during our ‘future-fit’ week that I use to start prepping them for the technical and complicated reality that awaits them in the working world. An attempt to bring them up to speed with freelancing, thinking entrepreneurially/independently, and leveraging their unique skillset across industries and in spaces they may not have considered before. An essential exercise to help sidestep the land mines that are journalism and the South African job market.

Anyway, the gist of my message on audacity to them was that the only difference between them and their peers going forward, apart from talent and skill, would be the act of being audacious. Particularly in the face of closed doors. That the most successful amongst them would be those who put their hands up first, who send cold and unsolicited emails and DMs, who apply when they don’t meet the spec, who apply when imposter syndrome sets in, who assist others, who ask, and who move without hesitation. Something like that.

“Audacity is central to everything I do. A lot of times I think my work is about just seeing if I can get away with it.”

Sufjan Stevens, New York Times, 2010

For me, being audacious has been freeing. One of the definitions for audacity is “unmitigated effrontery” – that might be the best descriptor yet, as it’s more than just being bold, it’s a boundless confidence. One could choose the more negative interpretation, which finds this a rude and impulsive way to be, but I have chosen a kinder one, to see it as unflinching self-belief a licence to act. Act on the things you think are out of reach, on the ideas you have swirling around in your head and heart.

One of those swirling ideas, was a narrative podcast project. One about work and workers in South Africa to be particular. I believe there is no such thing as an easy job, that all work no matter how seemingly contrived or straightforward takes something from us, demands something of us that injects value into the labour performed – no matter what it is. And so about a year ago now, I put this provocation down into words on a working document for a podcast. With no idea how I would get the time and resources to make this, but the belief that this forward motion would spur on cascading action.

And it did, two months on, when a call for projects was made by Africa No Filter, looking for work focused on reimagining work in the African context (about a month after a rejection for another production grant). I jumped at the opportunity, created a short sizzle episode to accompany my application and sent it off quickly, before I could talk myself out of it. Luckily for me, my idea, rooted in the humanity linked to the kinds of work we engage in, piqued ANF’s interest and soon I was shortlisted, interviewed and then selected as one of 36 storytellers awarded a grant to bring their projects to life.

This week I started sharing the work I have been carefully crafting over the last few weeks, a narrative podcast focused on work and working peeople in South Africa.

Essentially, my biggest takeaway from continually betting on myself and my ideas is that people and opportunities will meet you at the level of your audacity. If you say “I am X” or “I can do X” and don’t blink, generally speaking, you’ll get an “okay, show us” and then it’s up to you to rise to the occasion. MaRisky? My favourite pastime. You won’t win every time, but you will win some of the time, and that alone is worth trying over and over and over and over again.

Having Kendrick Lamar’s man at the garden on repeat for two years also helps.

Sunday Scribble #13: Nothing from my side

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Indifference on public display.

Between Panyaza Lesufi’s hotel showers, flashbacks of those garish SONA dresses and an MP attending a parliamentary committee meeting during a nail appointment at my local Sorbet – my patience and trust in public officials is in disrepair.

So there I was, after a morning of classes, overgrown nailbeds begging for mercy at what was a quiet station at my local Sorbet. The hour one has in that chair allows for a semblance of calm as you watch your assigned nailtech go through the motions. The occasional chatter from adjacent stations does drift over every now and again, but usually not in a way that would be disruptive. Before I go any further, let me make my full disclaimer that I am not an intolerant Karen, hold on to that.

Right. So, there I am, doing my best to think of nothing and no one that afternoon, when a woman with a half-open laptop walks into the shop. She makes a beeline for the station right next to mine and as she gets closer I can hear the familiar drone of a virtual meeting blaring from her laptop. She asks for somewhere to put the device because she has to attend this meeting or else. Or else what the nail tech asks, or else people will “ask questions” she retorts. At this point, I look over in some disbelief, remembering a similar incident when I needed to get something signed by a commissioner of oaths and someone in the line next to me was “attending” an online lecture in the same fashion. Absent but marked present, while her AI meeting note taker actually paid attention to her schooling. Back in the salon, the pointed look led to a minor volume adjustment, at which point my eye caught a familiar emblem flashing in the top right of the screen, the unmistakable shades of green and gold in our parliamentary coat of arms.

The next speaker then shared their screen and the presentation that popped up confirmed that this was a committee meeting. One happening just two weeks after parliament opened for the year, mind you, but some people were already attending nail appointments during meetings. The Excel spreadsheet was proving quite the snoozefest, and my multitasking neighbour decided this was a good time to hop on a quick phone call. So now we had the meeting on, a phone call on the go and all illusion of the calm and tranquillity promised on the walls gone.

I minded less about the noise and more about the brazen dereliction of duty on display. This meeting surely wasn’t a surprise, and if it was, a sane individual would make a plan to schedule around it. No? Am I the insane one here? Additionally, when one is working on things as important as public policy or matters surrounding the public purse, halfhearted attendance seems not only negligent but dangerous. And sure, we live in a time when maybe we do meet more often than we should and perhaps the conversation on the agenda has been parsed in several different ways, setting in fatigue, but nor maan. Taking a meeting in a nail salon is nuts. Let’s put your job on ice for a second, what about the other people in your company? Why should we be subjected to attending the meeting by virtue of being within earshot of it? And yes, we have all tapped out of such meetings with a “nothing from my side” or a simple 👍🏾 in the chat, but fully doing personal maintenance on a work call is a step too far. Well, that’s what I think anyway.

Best bits: On the calculation of volume by Solvej Balle 

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November 18th when I catch you 🥷🏾 What was simply once an innocuous date and an old Drake song I like became my biggest opp while reading this novel. 

In short, Tara (our protagonist) is stuck in the same day playing itself out on a loop. One that renders her so far removed from the original day and the life that preceded it, that she has to physically escape it and start looking for a door into the next day. 

This is one of seven books in a series that explores some interesting metaphysical possibilities. You know I love me some sci-fi, parallel universe stuff so my mind was racing with possible hypothesis while reading. Beyond the compelling plot, Balle’s prose grips you from the onset and throughout. Her use of metaphor about marital loneliness in particular was heart wrenching. I also liked that so far there were no easy answers about how this happened to Tara, it allowed me to be intimately melded to her frustration and curiosity. 

Would I read it again? You know what, no. You can feel the frustration and drag of the day and “dis nou genoeg”. 

Would I recommend it? Yes! 

Would I put it on a ‘100 books you must read before you die list’? No, not mine anyway, maybe yours. But doesn’t take away from it being a wonderful read.