Explore every episode of the podcast Don't Shoot The Messenger

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 during lockdown as a pretence to offer battered women shelter. And we’re speaking to a British academic who believes her work with churches can provide a model for other countries with strong religious institutions.

Don’t Shoot the Messenger is produced by Haji Mohamed Dawjee and written and presented by Rebecca Davis with editing by Tevya Turok Shapiro, sound mix by Bernard Kotze and additional support by Kathryn Kotze.

This podcast has been sponsored by Ninety One.

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 to Saira Rao and Regina Jackson, founders of the controversial project Race2Dinner.



MUSIC: Oh Freedom! (Slave spiritual folk song) by Sound of Joy & Oh Freedom! as sung by the Golden Gospel Singers



Don’t Shoot the Messenger is produced by Haji Mohamed Dawjee and written and presented by Rebecca Davis with editing by Tevya Turok Shapiro, sound mix by Bernard Kotze and additional support by Kathryn Kotze.



This podcast has been sponsored by Ninety One.

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 for Season 3 of Don’t Shoot The Messenger, launching on the 1st of March 2021.

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 - and explode they did, while Rodney had already ridden to safety on a bicycle across the South African border. We travelled to hear the story from Rodney Wilkinson himself.



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.



This podcast has been sponsored by Investec.

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 a confession read aloud in court to provide information on how Cape Town’s nuclear power station could be bombed without loss of human life.



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.



This podcast has been sponsored by Investec.

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 specialist, an earthquake expert, and an activist who has been horrified for years by the risk posed by Koeberg nuclear power station.



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.

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 - and find that around the country, some golf courses on municipal land are paying as little as R20 rent per year. You read that right: R20 annually.



In this episode, we have no trouble making the case against golf in South Africa in 2020 - but in the interests of fairness, we take a look at the other side too.



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.

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 its growing hold on South African social media users too – many of whom may not even realise that they are playing into a vast and very dangerous game.



Additional Resources:

For further information on the possible true identity of Q, listen to episode 166 of the excellent podcast Reply All.



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.

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 to find ways to keep pupils learning from afar. The innovation is there, the technology is available, and online teaching does away with some of the practical problems which plague the local education system.



So in this week’s episode of our podcast, we’re asking: Could virtual learning offer the key to boosting South Africa’s schooling even in non-lockdown times?



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.



NGOs and businesses mentioned in this episode:

Olico Mathematics Education: https://learn.olico.org/

Axium Education: https://www.axiumeducation.org/

Digicampus: https://www.digicampus.co.za/

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 - and his ultimate feelings on Al-Qaeda may surprise you.



Six Years With Al-Qaeda: The Stephen McGown Story will be published by Maverick 451 in late November. Keep an eye on the Daily Maverick website for further details.



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.

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.

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 genocide. And we’re talking to a man who bears one of the notorious surnames in the history of South Africa – who has made it his life’s mission to help undo the damage of his forebears.



Don’t Shoot the Messenger is produced by Haji Mohamed Dawjee and written and presented by Rebecca Davis with editing by Tevya Turok Shapiro, sound mix by Bernard Kotze and additional support by Kathryn Kotze.



This podcast has been sponsored by Ninety One.

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

The great global slowdown imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic is forcing a slower pace of life on most of us, whether we like it or not. There’s something about hitting the brakes for this amount of time that can feel deeply anxiety-inducing - so we thought we’d use this moment to explore the benefits of taking it nice and slow.



In this week’s episode, we’re investigating the virtues of slowness: learning about the secrets of the world’s slowest mammals, exploring the delights of the Slow Food Movement, and hearing how the annual month of Ramadan brings a moment of calm and reflection to Muslim lives.



Don’t Shoot the Messenger is produced by Haji Mohamed Dawjee, presented by Rebecca Davis, edited by Tevya Turok Shapiro, with original theme music by Bernard Kotze and additional support from Kathryn Kotze.



Special thanks to Muhammad Dawjee for providing this week’s episode with original music from his soon to be released EP: Otherness.

Featured tracks in order of play:

Doublespeak

Neither

Dialect



Additional audio:

This American Life -



Additional reading:

All-Day Venison, a slow-food recipe by Tony Jackman

In late April, Cuba sent 217 healthcare workers to South Africa to help fight Covid-19. A tremendous humanitarian gesture involving heroic doctors? Perhaps. But the deployment looks likely to cost the South African government almost half a billion rand - at a time when South Africa has its own doctors and nurses sitting unemployed. What’s really going on?



Cuba has been lending its doctors to other countries since the 1960s as a gesture of international solidarity, and those doctors have won praise for their work in some of the toughest public health contexts on record.



But as the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Mark Keller explains in this episode, from the 2000s onwards the Cuban medical missions began to serve another purpose too: to make some much-needed cash for the Cuban government.



With the South African state reportedly being charged over R450 million for the Cuban medical mission sent to South Africa to fight Covid-19, the question is whether these doctors are even really needed - and why South Africa would be willing to pay such a high price.



With Mark Keller, we unpack the history of Cuba’s medical missions and why they have on occasion been likened to “human trafficking”. We also hear from advocate Rene Govender, who for years has been fighting an uphill battle to win South African doctors who trained overseas the right to practice medicine here. Unlike with the Cuban doctors, nobody is rolling out the red carpet for these unemployed local medics.



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.



Additional Credits:



Supporting audio provided by: Al-Jazeera, University of Miami, Redfish Stream and News24.



Guantanamera by Playing for Change. Is the deployment of Cuban doctors to SA justified?

On this week’s show, we’re thinking about Tomorrowland: the fascinating connections between pandemics and pop culture. The Bubonic Plague struck Europe more than 650 years ago, yet its impact is still felt in art today. As we face the greatest social disruption since World War II, with COVD-19 killing hundreds of thousands of people globally, we’re asking: What mark will this moment leave on art, fashion, film and literature? To help us explore ‘Tomorrowland’, we’re talking to experts in fashion, film – and to South African author Lauren Beukes, who just spent five years immersed in a fictional pandemic, only to emerge into a real one.



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.

What happens when a country suddenly makes the sale of alcohol and tobacco illegal? It turns out the answer is: quite a lot. Suddenly the trauma units of some of the busiest hospitals in the world are virtually empty, as drunk driving ceases to be such a serious social problem and bar brawls and other forms of interpersonal violence virtually disappear. That’s a great result. But some of the other effects are not so positive. In this episode, we look at the impact of South Africa’s lockdown ban on selling tobacco and alcohol: ranging from the difficulties faced by alcoholics, to the fact that massive criminal syndicates are currently enjoying the payday of their lives with tobacco trade driven underground.



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.

When the regulations for COVID-19 kicked in, Dave Martin actively disseminated information to the community about safety practices and different ways people could practice social distancing - like how to create isolation spaces for the elderly who live in rondawels and assisting spaza shop owners by providing them with Jik to sterilise their spaces. Dave is also the original founder of Bulugule Lodge, so he rushed to get the eco-friendly space ready for the most vulnerable members of the Nqileni Village community - the majority of them are elders who live with diabetes and other chronic illnesses. The lodge is now filled with a generation of people who in the past have had little opportunity to socialise with one another. And in a time of dread and anxiety, there exists a tiny community of a forgotten generation who are making the most of a safe space by enjoying a wonderful selection of music, sharing stories and indulging in their favourite past time - smoking pipe tobacco. In a time of social-distancing, these elders are mastering the art of safe socialising. In this episode, we hear from them. They share inside stories of their experience, tell us how they spend their time and enlighten us on the rare opportunities for joy that can be found in times like these.



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.

Ian Goldin, Professor of Globalisation and Development at the University of Oxford and author of The Butterfly Defect chats to us about the effects pandemics have on global co-operation, what technological advancements are being used and should be used when dealing with global emergencies and how COVID-19 will change our physical landscapes and impact the relationships younger generations have with elders. He discusses how ultimately, times like these are a test of human character while reflecting on Cyril Ramaphosa’s admirable interventions in comparison with other countries; and he shares which developments he hopes to see in the future as a result of this pandemic.

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.

With special thanks to Arundhati Roy

Resources: The Butterfly Defect by Ian Goldin

The coronavirus pandemic is already taking a significant toll on human relationships. In this episode, we look at the separations between loved ones created by the South African lockdown, and one way people are finding to deal with separation.

Rebecca also talks to a couple whose relationship has survived a situation far more intense than a 21-day lockdown: just the two of them, in a confined space, with limited supplies, at the mercy of terrifying external forces, for six months...

To report domestic violence or abuse contact the Gender-Based Violence Command Centre at 0800 150 150

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.

Additional credits:

Additional audio from South China Morning Post and Times Free Press

Music by Sandy Pierce and Young Rich Pixies

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 two generations, and busting some of those tired myths you still hear all the time – like that “women’s sport just can’t attract any money because nobody wants to watch it”.



Don’t Shoot the Messenger is produced by Haji Mohamed Dawjee and written and presented by Rebecca Davis with editing by Tevya Turok Shapiro, sound mix by Bernard Kotze and additional support by Kathryn Kotze.



This podcast has been sponsored by Ninety One.

It’s now clear that the Covid-19 pandemic is going to have effects that we’ll be dealing with for quite some time afterwards - not just in terms of public health, but also economically and perhaps also politically.

We wanted to know: what does history say about the likely political fallout of this kind of health emergency? Can pandemics foment revolutions, or birth dictatorships?

In this episode, Rebecca speaks to Yale Professor Frank Snowden, who has studied the effects of pandemics throughout history: from the medieval plague to more contemporary diseases like malaria.

Don’t Shoot the Messenger is produced by Haji Mohamed Dawjee and presented by Rebecca Davis with sound engineering and editing by Tevya Shapiro, original music by Bernard Kotze and additional support by Kathryn Kotze.

Additional credits:

Featuring audio from Voices of the First World War (BBC.co.uk)

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 news, and the vicious nature of the conversation. We’re looking at a counter-intuitively simple fix for the issue of misinformation, and talking to a South African researcher who is using the tricks of trolls and bots for good rather than evil.



Additional Resources:

Full interview between Fairfax Media’s Ginger Gorman and ‘Mark’, the troll: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNCTBtpf_pI



Don’t Shoot the Messenger is produced by Haji Mohamed Dawjee and written and presented by Rebecca Davis with editing by Tevya Turok Shapiro, sound mix by Bernard Kotze and additional support by Kathryn Kotze.



This podcast has been sponsored by Ninety One.

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. We're talking to a professor who has made it his business to see Cecil John Rhodes account for his deeds - in fictional form; and to a museum curator whose job it is to collect Germany's most toxic monuments.



Additional reading: The Trial of Cecil John Rhodes by Adekeye Adebayo (Jacana, 2021)



Don’t Shoot the Messenger is produced by Haji Mohamed Dawjee and written and presented by Rebecca Davis with editing by Tevya Turok Shapiro, sound mix by Bernard Kotze and additional support by Kathryn Kotze.



This podcast has been sponsored by Ninety One.

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 help explain why this issue is neither trivial nor middle-class; exploring one of the most successful anti-littering campaigns in history: and speaking to someone on the team which designed a simple but brilliant local product: a giant vacuum cleaner for the beach.



Don’t Shoot the Messenger is produced by Haji Mohamed Dawjee and written and presented by Rebecca Davis with editing by Tevya Turok Shapiro, sound mix and theme music by Bernard Kotze and additional support by Kathryn Kotze.

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. In a country with SA’s levels of unemployment, it just might be the only sensible next step.



Don’t Shoot the Messenger is produced by Haji Mohamed Dawjee and written and presented by Rebecca Davis with editing by Tevya Turok Shapiro, sound mix and original music by Bernard Kotze and additional support by Kathryn Kotze.

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 what makes the good ones good, and along the way we are busting some of the myths that have built up over the years around this troublesome topic.



Don’t Shoot the Messenger is produced by Haji Mohamed Dawjee and written and presented by Rebecca Davis with editing by Tevya Turok Shapiro, sound mix by Bernard Kotze and additional support by Kathryn Kotze. How To Fix South Africa’s Schools: Lessons From Schools That Work (2014) · ‘Schools That Work’

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 areas, and learn what’s regarded as the most important measures to take towards establishing a crime-free society long term.



Don’t Shoot the Messenger is produced by Haji Mohamed Dawjee and written and presented by Rebecca Davis with editing by Tevya Turok Shapiro, original music and sound mix by Bernard Kotze and additional support by Kathryn Kotze.



This podcast has been sponsored by Ninety One.

Ninety One SA (Pty) Ltd is an authorised financial services provider.