Welcome to episode 11 of the OC 154 Podcast.

This is one episode that is jam packed with stories, stories for days I tell you, of our time during varsity days, at Wits, which is where the three of us first met.

A bit of background on what the CC, or Central Committee we keep referring to is…basically an informal think tank of some sort at Mens Res that we had. From what I can recall, the genesis of this so-called CC was around our second year into third year at Mens Res. There was a pool table in there where gents would gather during their free time to play pool in the common room. Now and again, an argument would erupt about any range of topics, but mostly politics, both on a national level and Wits. Over time there started being rules around how these arguments take place, some house rules if you like. I just remember us nit even playing pool anymore in that room, where the primary reason for going there was to hang out and argue with gents. My memory might be failing me here, but I hope I got the crux of it right.

I am recording this after a weekend where I attended my fiancé graduation at the University of the Free State. And she, like many of her fellow graduates, have very little experience of a university campus life because a great majority of their degrees were completed remotely, while the world was under COVID lockdowns. So if you are a first year at a tertiary institution this year, your seniors on campus this year who doing their post-graduate might not be the best example of the sort of mindset that a tertiary student should have, and to no fault of their own. So I highly recommend this episode as we make a deep dive into discussing the hidden curriculum that comes with sharing a physical campus with different people from all walks of life, and who are equally or smarter than you, who are from different financial backgrounds from you, and so forth. In fact, this particular episode was inspired by an interview we had watched of one of our former fellow raiders at Mens Res, Phesheya, that he did with Penuel. The guy comes from a very affluent family and he stayed with the rest of us, peasants at Mens res. And I was taken aback to hear some of the challenges he spoke about that came with being a cheese boy. It turns out, that the identity crisis that many of us suffer in our early adulthood, is orthogonal to how well off the family you come from is.

We explore many other related topics such as, the quality, or lack thereof, of the basic education in South Africa, university administrative structures, the value of Res life versus off campus living, the importance of being street smart in university, financial and academic exclusion, navigating friendships with friends that did not get to go to university, and other topics.

We start off the episode by exploring the complexities and the dynamics between inter-socio class friendships, and the moreki complex amongst friends, sparked by a story about myself and a friend of mine who could not make it to varsity but ended up with "I blew it" money after the passing of his father.

As we approach the end of our recording, we begin to catch out on all the stories that were narrated throughout our recording, we get into the what I can call the punchline of our conversation, we extract lessons the country can learn from this micro-community that we were part of at Mens res, given the striking similarities between the little community and the country at large. So I would urge you to listen till the end because that is where cash value of all the stories lie.

So much has happened in this country since the recording of this episode, and here is some of the big events I would like to reflect on before we get into today’s episode.

last week, , we woke up to the tragic news of AKA being shot outside a club in Durban. But at the same time, during the mourning process and the shock that many people are rightfully displaying, some other weird things also start happening.

You see people on twitter, who were not that close to AKA, who are just remote fans like myself, become a little bit hysterical, almost to a point of attention seeking.

I saw someone joke that, Rasta is busy preparing his paint as we speak, and I mean that is a fairly innocuous joke, it is not insensitive in any way because it is not making fun of AKA’s death itself or making fun of the fact that he is dead, so when I went into the comments, most people just chuckled along and liked the joke, because it is a South African inside joke that when someone passes away, Rasta will soon paint a remotely resembling portrait of them, which he did eventually by the way, and this time around it wasn’t bad honestly. But then some people started attacking this poor guy for this joke, the “its too soon brigade”. And if we are being honest, how angry are they really about this joke, or do they just want to demonstrate how good and compassionate people they are, who care so much about AKA’s death that they are willing to attack another guy who probably didn’t know AKA in real life just like them, for making a harmless joke in the mist of the news about his death. I cannot help but think that this virtue signalling behaviour is the product of the woke culture that is currently dominating social media these days, where people think the more outrage they express, the more of good hearts we will think they have.

Don’t even get me started with Panyaza Lesufi and his attempts to get AKA a state funeral. Put aside the argument about whether or not AKA deserves a state funeral, but do we really think an attention seeking politician like Panyaza Lesufi was trying to do this out of the goodness of his heart? Or it was just an opportunity for his to grand stand and pave his way to the 2024 elections, like we have seen him do with many issues that he knows are close to people’s hearts. This guy is really starting to become annoying. It was all good when he was doing it during his MEC of Education days, but now it is getting too much bro. We don’t have to see you handing out sanitary pads to school girls, you can do it privately, in fact, something like that should be done privately. For those who have not seen that picture, you don’t want to its too cringe.

The second thing that started happening that brought with it some bizzare things as well, is when people want to try and piece together what happened and what was the motive behind. And unfortunately, knowing the incompetence of Bheki Cele and his people, we may never know, we may have to wait another 10 years like we saw with the Senzo Meyiwa case.

Everyone is doing their own research these days; we don’t need the so-called experts anymore.

But guys, we cannot build a justice system on twitter threads and Youtube channels. As cute as alternative media, alternative medicine, alternative this and that may be, we cannot rely on Adv Barry Roux twitter account to resolve the crime for us in this country, we need the police force that work, we need impartial and competent courts, we need intelligence, we need experts.

In this episode, we explore a somewhat esoteric aspect of our lives. H and I had experience with the psychedelics in a form of psilocybin mushrooms. The goal, for me at least, was to continue the search for and to investigate the nature of consciousness. I have been a meditator for almost 4 years now, and most of my insights in this area of my life were greatly influenced by the American philosopher and Neuroscientist, Sam Harris. I use his meditation app to start my day every morning, and I have consumed tens, if not hundreds of hours of the content on his meditation app on topics ranging from moral philosophy, to living a good life all the way to Buddhist teachings and Eastern Philosophy in general. He is one public intellectual who has had the most influence in my life in the recent years, especially after I officially became an atheist. He introduced me to what spiritually means and looks like outside of organised religion, what has come to be known as secular spirituality. On the other hand, H’s curiosity was sparked by his encounter with Will Smith’s ayahuasca story in his auto-biography as well as Bill Burr’s magic mushroom experience that he shared in his latest Netflix special, and other people who had claimed to have had a spiritual experience from ingesting these compounds. We spend the greater part of the first half of this episode, sharing our subjective experiences, or trips as they are colloquially referred to. We had a whole build up to our respective experiences, and naturally, we did a lot of research too. Was the experience as pyrotechnic as we had anticipated? Have you ever wondered what sex is like while on a psychedelic trip? There is some ground-breaking research at the moment taking place in the states on these substances, decades after they were banned even for purposes of scientific research. The research so far is proving the tremendous psychological benefits that these substances can have, and the health of many addicts and mental patients they have managed to restore, even on patients with mental pathologies that had proven to be resistant to pharmaceutical drugs and therapy. Later in the podcast, GT, whose life is self-admittedly a mess of a different kind, finally joins us after a weekend of binge drinking, and he tries his best to convince us that he is sober. We then proceed to do our favourite thing; we judge him relentlessly. He had actually convinced me to take out that part of the podcast because he felt like he was not his best self, but I convinced him otherwise. You can listen and be the judge. Okay, maybe it’s about time we did a bit of psychoanalysing here, are we maybe jealous that GT is having too much of a good time for our liking down in the mother city? I mean the guy is living the life of a rock star down there, in this episode, we even find out that he may or may not be Mamokgethi Phakeng’s Ben 10, and she is essentially the one funding this unruly lifestyle of his. On the other news, at our Alma Matta, Wits university, a lecturer by the name of Jeremia Lelosa is embroiled in a scandal for allegedly scamming a couple of people, including his colleagues there at Wits and one of GT’s friends. GT gives us all the scoop in this controversy, Wits has since suspended the lecturer pending investigations. We also have a voice note from the lecturer himself, that he had sent to this friend of GT, so, you cannot afford to miss that part of this episode.

In this episode, we discuss some of the topics that have become the staple of this podcast, now.

We investigate how Africans can organise their societies using their value systems to reimagine different aspects of their existence.

This is a discussion very close to H's heart as you would have heard in the previous recordings. But personally, I find the arguments to be bordering on polylogisms, for the most part, which is essentially an idea that different racial and cultural groups and societies reason in fundamentally different ways or put differently, that different groups of people have different logic.

We can always expand on this discussion in the future recordings but for now, you can make up your mind on the debate we had with H on this topic in this episode.

And then something very interesting happened in South Africa two weeks or so after the recording of this episode, the Dischem scandal. For those who are not familiar with this controversy, I will give you a quick synopsis.

An internal staff communication leaked on social media on which the powers that be at Dischem declared a moratorium on the employment and promotion of white people in the company because they felt that they were not achieving their BEE targets in terms of the ratio of black people and the whites within the organisation quick enough.

This obviously sparked great contention, the nature of which would be difficult to summarise here.

But some of the discussions were around the diversity in the workplace, and how corporate South Africa has not transformed over time.

In this episode, GT introduced us to a study that was done by Deloitte which found that lack of diversity is one of the top reasons professionals leave their employment. We unpack this topic and I share with you my experience working at a black firm in Johannesburg, while on the other hand, H is deeply troubled by the adoption of the American concepts such as diversity to describe challenges that we face as a country that is a majority black country.

As the Dischem scandal unfolded, especially on social media, some white people announced and threatened to boycott and sell their shares at Dischem, and of course, black twitter being black twitter, a smalernyana campaign erupted in which every black person was encouraged to purchase these shares as the share price dropped obviously from this scandal and as some people disposed of their shares. And ladies and gentlemen, as I am speaking to you today, Dischem is now a black majority owned business! Of course I am kidding, there is no such.

But imagine it was, would that change anything about Dischem as we know it today? Will it really matter? And that is where the discussions on our podcast takes this question a step further.

To what end do we want this so-called diversity and inclusion so badly if a Dischem is going to just be a dischem as we know it today whether it is under black or white ownership and senior management.

Hence H believes that the barometer should be set a bit higher for a business to call itself a black business. Being a black business cannot be just a matter of pigmentation of those in governance and ownership of the business, it should be way more than that. To find out what H means here, stick around for the rest of the episode. Do you agree with his sentiments? Well, I don’t entirely agree with him as you will be able to tell, but this is much further in the episode.

At the beginning, as has become tradition by now, we start off the episode by discussing our respective weekends. And for the first time ever in months, GT spent the weekend doing some of his academic work for the PHD that he is doing, for a change, well done to him.

This conversation quickly takes a different turn, and it becomes about Prof Mamokgethi Phakeng, the VC down there at UCT, where GT happens to be doing his PHD. These and other topics.

Welcome to episode 7 of the OC 154 Podcast. As has become the norm now, we start off the episode by looking back at our respective weekends. We record on Sunday evenings, so its always nice to have a quick catch up of the weekend behind us. On the Friday prior to the recording of this episode, Sifiso Nene had a comedy show, Baby Mama Drama 2, in Bloemfontein, which is where I am currently based. And of course I attended the show. So I start off by giving the gents my experience of Sifiso’s comedy and how polished and well crafted his show is, even with the bits he performs in Zulu. Which leads to me to having a banter about the poor quality of material and the laziness of vernacular comedians like bo Mashabela. You can tell here that this is something I have been waiting to share my thoughts on, it’s really bothering me. Well, I also had my very own baby drama on the evening of the show, which I also talk about. While we are still talking about comedy, we used this opportunity to give our views on the Khanyi Mbau roast that had aired during the week of recording this episode. Anyways, another thing that was happening live while we were recording is the South African Music Awards at Sun City, apparently, lol. I say apparently with a tongue in chick because no one even knew that the awards would be and had taken place during that weekend. The quality of those awards is absolutely appalling, and we certainly do not mince our words here to describe how horrible the quality of the whole production of the award show has become, and how little relevance they have left. Not even the somewhat ironic technical problems we started having while complaining about the poor quality of the SAMAs could stop us. The incompetencies in many spheres of our country then opens up a discussion about the controversial Dr Phophi Ramathuba’s video that was making the rounds. Where she is seen addressing a patient at one of the hospitals in Limpopo that are under her administration. The patient is of a Zimbabwean nationality, and this of course leads to a very contentious discussion about the illegal immigrants in the country, and the strain they put on our health system, or not. This is one of those classic OC 154 type of conversations. Difference of opinions and point of views and a good debate. More than anything, I believe the discussion is a thought provoking one that is bound to get you re-assessing your current position on the topic, in one way or another. To make sure that we also leave no stones unturned, I also play the devil’s advocate on the discussion here and there to ensure that even the views that are not held by any of the 3 of us, are well presented on the discussion. The number one rule about playing the devil’s advocate is to ensure not to straw man the arguments that you yourself do not hold as your own, I remain conscious of this throughout the discussion and I would like to think I did a good job at that. And of course, you cannot talk about the politics of illegal immigrants in the country, especially those from fellow African countries, and not discuss the EFF. Here, we get to hear H, who is arguably the most loyal EFF supporter I know personally, vehemently lambast their naïve position on the question of illegal immigrants and how they reacted to the Dr Phophi’s video. I have to say, I was quite surprised by H’s stands on this particular one. After this, we then proceed to discuss South African famous slay queens, Mihlali in particular. Listen, I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed this conversation, and I have no doubt that you will too, in fact, I can guarantee you that you, will. This conversation beautifully oscillates between the trivial and the very important, between the serious and the very silly and ridiculous. It is the sort of conversation you would probably be listening to if you were a fly on the wall in the corridors of Mens Res. The discussion addresses everything from the crass display of materialism by

In this episode, we tackle and unpack the Senzo Meyiwa murder trial that is currently ongoing.

My two co-hosts, H and GT are both law graduates and we had also invited our 4th friend who is also a law graduate and has been paying close attention to this case, to come join us in trying to make sense of this messy trial.

This is by no means an attempt to reveal some hidden mysteries of this case or to resolve it, but we simply try to make sense of the information that is already in the public domain.

Furthermore, this podcast should be treated separately from my and my co-hosts’ professional careers, as it is simply a casual conversation amongst ourselves as ordinary members of the public.

Even though my co-hosts’ insights are incredibly useful and interesting in making sense of this case, they should never be treated as legal or professional opinion or advice under any circumstances.

Senzo Meyiwa trial, which we kick start by looking back at the origins of this case, and the unfolding of events as they took place over the years, before we saw the resumption of this case again now in 2022. I thought this might be a useful way to remind ourselves of a broader context of where we find ourselves today in this case, and how the public conversation surrounding this case has evolved over time.

Many might argue, including myself, that the change in the tide of this case in the court of public opinion is around the time when the NPA erroneously leaked the details around the controversial second docket in 2019, and this is also exactly a point where our conversation also takes a different turn.

You will notice a thread throughout this episode of me asking some really basic questions that many of us are too embarrassed to ask about how the different cogs within our justice system work and interface with one another, I ask for definitions of some of the jargon the lawyers like to use and hide behind so that they can charge crazy fees, that you will hear my co-host casually use as well. So I did the heavy lifting for you here, and it was not easy, as you will hear GT’s uncontrollable laughter at some of my seemingly imbecilic questions.

Which brings me to a second reason I wanted us to have this conversation. The law and the justice system affects us all, yet, an average South African like myself knows so little about it, and on the other hand, the concepts used by the lawyers and the legal texts to describe some of the basic principles are so lofty and very intimidating to a pedestrian like myself. So I thought this Senzo Meyiwa trial would be a good case study to learn a few of some of these concepts in a criminal case like this one and in a digestible fashion and with immediate real life application and examples from an actual trial.

Lastly, we had a discussion about Advocate Teffo, which took a very interesting turn that I could have never predicted. Our guest co-host revealed that the man did not complete his pupilage, which is some kind of formalized training for advocates. This revelation opens up a debate which highlights the nature and the route of acquiring the status of prestige within the advocacy field, which is one way of looking at that conversation, another way to look at it, especially if you are studying towards a law career, is that the discussion provides some career guidance on what you need to look out for if you want to practice as an advocate, especially given the new regulation that has come into effect recently that GT educated us about.

We also discuss the usual suspects in this case, Kelly Khumalo, Longwe and Chiko Thwala, Maggie Phiri, and many other characters and subtopics.

So in this episode, I am going to neatly package predictions we made about Kaya Fm breakfast show, which Sol is now part of, that we made during the main episode and assess the extend to which they materialized.

So the first discussion point I would like to start off with, which is not a prediction per se.

When the news broke that Dineo would be co-hosting the breakfast show with Sol, the impression I got was that he would be the co-host who will play an equal role in anchoring the show, as opposed to a mere traffic guy.

1stJuly, 6 am, we all got up extra early to listen to the much anticipated 959 Breakfast show, the show trending on social media before the end of the first hour of the show.

So over the years of being an avid listener of radio, I noticed something about how the shows that are personality driven tend to be structured. They sort of center the features of the show around the personalities who are the face of that show. This is not always the case, but in instances where they actually do do it, you can learn a lot about the kind of things the hosts are into, and if done well, you can get best show out of your hosts, because they would get a chance to express their interests through these features which is always a win for the listener.

They have the politics on Mondays, during which they bring a polical analytics, last week was Eusebius, but I am not sure if he is the permanent host of that feature or they will be doing different analysts over time, but that is neither here nor there for the point I am trying to get to here. It is not clear to who this feature is meant for between Sol and Dineo, but I personally think it is just one of those features to bring about some gravity to the show. If that was the producers thinking, it would make total sense, the two are celebrity type entertainers, and if left to be, they would certainly spend the entire week talking silly celebrity things and not even touching on some big important issues in the country, so you need a feature to sort of force that discussion, even if it is just once a week on a Monday.

Welcome to episode 5 of the OC 154 Podcast. Right off the bat, I would like to say, this was one of the most enjoyable episodes to record for me, maybe it is because of the kind of topics we got to explore in the episode, or maybe I had one too many rounds of vodka, who knows, but I hope you enjoy the episode as much as I did.

GT and I start off the episode on a bit of a light note, as we share personal stories from our weekends. My suspicion was finally confirmed that the main reason GT went to stay in Cape Town was not to do his PHD, but to get laid, primarily, the PHD is just an excuse.  So he shares the story of a failed attempt from the weekend of the recording of the episode, which H and I were convinced that it was a missed opportunity for a 3 sum.

H then also chirps in with a story about his weekend, which was far less promiscuous, and as always, I of course used that opportunity to get some marriage advise from him, despite the fact that the story had absolutely nothing to do with marriage or relationships.

After this little chatter, we jump straight into our main topic for the week.

Welcome to the supplementary episode to episode 4 that we published two weeks ago. The goal of these episodes is not fixed at this point, it is my little experiment to see what value can I extract from our main episode and what other additional content that can we package for you that makes the podcast more than just audio entertainment.

For this particular episode, as promised from the main episode, my goal is to have a look at some of the claims that the three of us made during our main episode, and to unpack them and link them to some underlying research or data. When we are recording, we try by all means to keep the conversation as natural as possible and unscripted, and as an unavoidable consequences of this, we are bout to utter some things that we are not a 100% sure of, or refer to events that we don’t exactly remember the details of, or make claims in passing that are worth exploring a little bit further. So in this episode, we are going to slow things down a bit and do some fact checking and deconstructing some arguments, providing some other necessary contexts, and other means of just enriching the original conversation we had.

I am going to take it for granted that you have already listened to the original episode, so I wont be reiterating anything verbatim or in great details, so if you have not listened to the main episode.

We introduce you to our friend, GT, who is now part of the podcast. He is as much passionate about radio as H and myself, in fact, between the 3 of us, he has had more opportunities to be on air, than the two of us, for better or worse, lol. He is a pedi guy from Limpopo, but he is now based in Cape town, working and furthering his studies. Okay, that is an understatement, he is doing his PHD. This episode starts off by H jokingly warning him against dating the Xhosa women (or Xhosa daughters, as our friends refer to them these days) there in Cape-town, or maybe H was not joking, lol, I don’t know. This opens up an interesting conversation about inter-tribal dating and marriage. H recently got married, to a Venda lady, and GT and I are convinced that it was a conscious decision by him to marry someone from his tribe. The conversation then quickly offramps into how South African ladies are not impressed with pedi guys and the close relationships they maintain with their moms, bo mma, which GT tries to defend. The conversation then naturally progresses towards finding out how is our newly married friend, H, finding marriage. I think by now you are getting used to H, his answer is nothing like what you will hear from the Naked DJ on AskAMan. Let me just say, Mjolo has never sounded this philosophical before. Thereafter, H provides a much needed segue into our first topic of the day, females in sports broadcasting, The topic comes after an episode of the Unklipped with Tats Nkonzo that we watched on Youtube, where he sat down with the 3 queens of sports broadcasting in the country. This conversation takes different twists and turns, including the discussion of the inclination by different genders towards different careers fields, men and women relations, how our respective human experiences shape our outlook of life, and other related topics. From this discussion about, how evolutionary biology may have influenced the number of females who are interested in sports versus men, H then draws an analogy between the way evolution can influence the decision-making process of people, and the failures of the ANC government as a liberation movement, and their complacency when the struggle was finally over. I know this kind of an analogy may sound like a bit of a stretch, but it worked somehow. He then closes off his argument with a rather “half empty glass” conclusion, which he uses various claims to support. H’s arguments, and what may seem to many like pessimism, are interwoven with the theories of the famous French political philosopher, Frantz Fanon around what he refers to as national consciousness. You can check out AudioBook Masters SA channel on Youtube, where you can get to hear H expanding on these kind of ideas. And then later in the recording, you will hear our conversation rudely interluded by the soundtrack. This was my best attempt at disguising the fact that H’s power got cut, mid-sentence, due to loadshedding. I mean, in this country you cannot make things like this up. Yes I know, we do sometimes struggle for some really opportune segues in our conversations, but a power cut to transit us to talk about loadshedding is not my idea of a good segue. In any case, GT and myself seized the opportunity to talk about Eskom and loadshedding. GT makes an argument based on an accusation made recently by Julius Malema about the deliberate attempts by the ANC government to destroy Eskom in order to be able to sell off to private ownership, which is an argument that is gaining some serious momentum in the country. Although I do not totally disagree with the possibility of this being the case, I challenge GT, and many others who share these sentiments to consider whether the failures of the ANC may be purely due to their incompetence.

We start of this episode by talking about the weather, the UK weather.

Yeah, I know, but I promise, it is not as boring as it sounds. Full disclosure, this is not a part of the

conversation that would typically feature on the podcast to be honest, because we start recording as

soon as we get into the call, so that we can start naturally flowing into the topics we had planned to

discuss on the day. So trust me, we did not plan to discuss the UK weather in this podcast. The

reason I decided to slide in this conversation into the podcast is because the conversation takes an

interesting turn, and it touches on some of the things I want to discuss on our post mortem episode.

We then take a quick dive into an extremely controversial topic, which was sparked by the Dave

Chappelle’s recent comedy special on Netflix, The closer, the topic of the LGBTQI-2S +, and trying to

get to the bottom of the outrage that we see levelled at Chappelle. H, being a big fan of Dave

Chappelle, gives us his philosophical perspective of the arguments that Dave Chappelle puts forward

in the Closer and tries to weave together Dave’s arguments from all his other specials over time, to

put this particular special in perspective. 

I also share a very disappointing experience that my friend

and I had with a group of gay guys back in our days as students just to add into a point that H had

made. On the aftermath, there are some contemplation I had about the difference between sex,

sexuality, and sexual orientation, and how these interact with the social politics in today’s day and

age. I will go do some reading on this and I will give you my full analysis on the post moterm episode.

On the flip side of the Dave Chappelle’s special, there is also a topic of Black Lives matter versus

Black Consciousness, as we take a look at chapter 14 of I write what I like, and how the Black

Americans conceptualise the idea of race, in a country where they are a minority, versus how the

black South Africans, and Africans at large, should be thinking about how we should assert ourselves

in the world in the continent that we are a majority. H gives us the case study of Thomas Sankara

during the 1980s Burkina Faso, and how he stood his ground against the French colonisers. This is

another part of our conversation that I would really like to do a deep dive into for the post moterm

episode.

We discuss these and many other topics, please be on the lookout for part two of this episode as we

continue our conversation.

Welcome to the OC 154 podcast In this episode 2 of the podcast, we discuss a seminar I attended the day before the recording of this episode, in which Dj Sbu had invited Gareth Cliff to his radio academy, and how the academy felt more like déjà-vu of all the hustles that Dj Sbu has pursued in the past, rather than a credible academic institution that is aimed at imparting skills and knowledge into the aspiring radio jocks, that he claims for it to be. This gets me thinking about whether he is taking advantage of the desperate young people who are trying to get into radio, and whether it would be fair to call him a charlatan. This is nothing close to a one sided conversation, I can promise you that much, because H, like many South Africans, consider Dj Sbu to be a really great hustler, they regard him as some kind of an iconoclastic figure, you know, they see him as this brave black brother who always challenges the status quo and swimming against the tide at all times, others even see his entrepreneurial spirit as some kind of a threat to the big, established corporations, as he himself also likes to preach. And, to a certain extent, I do agree with these sentiments, I mean, Dj Sbu is a street-smart guy. This then opens a broader conversation about how the way the socio-economic structures are set up, creates a breeding ground, if you like, for the Dj-Sbu like characters and some of the shenanigans we see in the bazalwane churches in the country with their dodgy pastors. I really like this episode of the podcast, it is what I had envisioned the format and the content of this podcast to become, and I am glad to see that our conversations are fast taking that shape so early on. H and I have no media or broadcasting experience, you see, so we do expect there to be some teething problems in these early days, but we also hope that this rawness and sincerity of our conversations, is what can get you to connect with us better, our style was not contaminated by any main stream media training, like you see with many prominent podcasts in the country today, so I hope this can be a platform for some alternative views. With that being said, though, this is not to say H and I see the world the same, in fact, the opposite is true. Individually, H and I engage with very differing content, we are inspired by a vast variety of thinkers, and we have had very different lives as you heard in our first episode, and these have obviously moulded our world views accordingly. But what we don’t see enough of today, not just in South Africa, but the world over, is having our world views challenged and questioned often, we live in our own little echo chambers; we only follow the people who already affirm our world views on social media, we are friends with people who agree with us, and we often feel the pressure to take on the dominant and popular views of the communities we live in, both in real life and online. So for me, it is quite a privilege to be able to have a conversation with someone I don’t agree with on most things, but whom I greatly respect, who also happens to be my friend. I get my views to be pressure tested against some strong opposing views, and sometimes, my mind even changed about things. I deliberately refer to this as a privilege because I know that this is not something that many of you have access to out there, when you share a different view with someone, you are most likely to get insulted and dismissed as stupid, a bigot and all the horrible things under sun, or the best case scenario, being told that you don’t like hearing the truth just because you disagree with them ,while they think they have exclusive access to the truth because of the information they consume. My ultimate dream for this podcast is to see a community of thinkers with diverse views come together and have healthy conversations and debates, and engage in intellectually honest critical thinking, that is not polluted by ideologies.

Welcome to the OC 154 podcast

In this first episode of the podcast, H and I are having a look at the indigenous South African languages.

So, during the month of June, Motsweding and Lesedi Fm celebrated their birthdays, and we thought, this would be such perfect time to reflect on the state of African languages, and to also interrogate the role that the vernacular media plays in growing and advancing these languages.

As you will hear, the conversation quickly morphs into a debate about how the pedantry that surrounds the use of these languages, hinders their day to day use, and arguably their growth too, you know. 

In this brief argument, you really get to hear how our respective life experiences and upbringings really shaped our attitudes towards our mothers’ tongue. 

So, I grew up in a Tswana speaking town in the Free State, and I went to the township schools from the beginning all the way to my matric year, and H on the other hand, comes from a Venda speaking family, but spent a greater part of schooling years in Gauteng, and went to a former Model-C school.

I spoke my mother tongue for the most part of my schooling years and H had an almost opposite experience. And you can really hear how these opposing experiences filter through to our conversation and the views we take in this. This is truly a South African conversation more than anything, I am sure many can relate to these kind of dynamics.

At some point in the podcast, we also have a look at the vernacular radio stations, where we shine a spotlight on the state of these radio stations at the current moment, and whether they are living up to the expectation we have of them, and whether they will survive these technological times where the internet is overtaking everything.

At the beginning of the podcast, we reflect on our failed attempts of getting into radio, which I promise will make you feel good about yourself, lol.

This is a subject matter that is really close to our hearts, so I really hope you enjoy the podcast.