Don't Shoot The Messenger

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 Ngaba and Mohale Mashigo about the crisis in representation that led to them creating their own work for South African children. Pan MacMillan publishers Miemie du Plessis and Sibongile Machika talk frankly about the issues - and also argue that the publishing industry is not entirely to blame.
Don’t Shoot the Messenger is produced by Haji Mohamed Dawjee and presented by Rebecca Davis with editing by Tevya Turok Shapiro, original theme music by Bernard Kotze and additional support by Kathryn Kotze.

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 possess for your own use.
The courts gave Parliament two years to draw up the necessary laws to take South Africa out of legal limbo. With the deadline about to run out, a draft bill has been produced - which both weed advocates and lawyers say is a disaster. In this episode, we explore the ways in which users and businesses are currently exploiting the loopholes in law, and look at why the proposed legislation is problematic.
Don’t Shoot the Messenger is produced by Haji Mohamed Dawjee and presented by Rebecca Davis with editing by Tevya Turok Shapiro, original theme music by Bernard Kotze and additional support by Kathryn Kotze.

Seven months into the Covid-19 pandemic, frighteningly little is still known about this new disease. But one thing that is now clear is that Covid-19 is not simply a lung disease. It can attack the brain, the kidneys, the gut, the blood system and more. And for the people now known as the Covid Long-haulers, the effects of Covid-19 can persist for month after month - laying them low with over 60 separate physical symptoms. There are over half a million Covid Long-haulers in the UK alone, and it’s estimated that millions more are suffering around the world, including in South Africa.
In this episode, we speak to health activist Robin Gorna - herself a Covid Long-hauler - and infectious disease researcher Professor Francois Venter about the growing medical acceptance that Covid-19 can manifest as a long-term condition for which there is currently no treatment and no cure.

Lockdown conditions imposed all over the world have succeeded in halting certain types of illegal trade – but also given rise to new and expanded black markets.
And while some of them are relatively benign, others are anything but.
In this episode we’re taking a look at the Covid-19 underworld: how the global lockdown has both disrupted traditional black markets, but also birthed new kinds of criminals. We’re taking a trip to the underbelly of the Dark Web, where the illegal products for sale now include the blood of people who have tested positive for coronavirus; and we’re zooming in on one particular South African black market, the trade in abalone, to see what effects the lockdown has had on this type of illegal trade.
Additional audio:
The Most Trafficked Animal in The World is Probably One You've Never Heard Of, by Fusion Media
Motherhacker podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/motherhacker/id1487213874
Additional reading:
Coronavirus source found in pangolin meat, by Don Pinnock and Tiara Walters on Daily Maverick
South Africa’s abalone black market is being squeezed by Covid-19, by Kimon de Greef on Haika
Poacher: Confessions from the Abalone underworld, by Kimon de Greef and Shuhood Abader

“Zooming With The Zumas” is the real title of a real YouTube series offering the public a front-row seat to intimate video chats between former South African president Jacob Zuma and his son Duduzane.
In this episode, we rope in Daily Maverick journalist Marianne Thamm to help unpack the perplexing world of Zooming with the Zumas: fact-checking some of the confounding claims made by the Zumas, analysing what it tells us about their undeniably curious family dynamics, and interrogating what on earth the point of this strange production could be.
Additional audio:
Zooming With The Zumas on YouTube
Additional reading:
Duduzane’s Dubai Lockdown Diary - Everything But The Lost Years, by Marianne Thamm
Parts Two and Three, in which the Zuma Dynasty finds itself a hapless victim of circumstance, by Marianne Thamm