MmeMaggie Nkwe is a pioneer, and a disturber of the peace. Some Johannesburg citizens will remember her as the founder of the Orlando Children’s Home, others as one of the first nurses trained in specialist paediatric care at Baragwanath Hospital. She worked with Professor Lucy Wagstaff to establish Primary Health Care services in Soweto. When roads were blocked and travel into and out of the township was stopped, the nurses in their uniforms were allowed through, to provide medical care to the children.

“Every day a mommy emails me to say that her baby is HIV-negative” Dr Sindi @sindivanzyl is probably best known for her work answering questions from mothers and mothers-to-be, about how to prevent HIV transmission to their babies. Using social media to reach mothers around the world, those who question her directly, and those who read her answers to other mothers and apply them to their own babies, has Dr Sindi says “changed my life”

Our discussion soon turned from seeds to Land. Forced removals didn’t just take people from the land – they severed the relationship with land, and lost the knowledge, spirituality and ritual connected with seeds and plants – sowing, harvesting, storing, using. Ceremony, a sense of belonging, knowledge passed between and also binding generations, were all lost along with land. A seed dialogue attempts to hold and join together the knowledge that is still there, nationally and internationally.

Although the conversation with Karim focuses on the Suikerbosrand, it makes wonderful detours. He talks about the stone walls on the West Coast which were built 1300/1400 years ago. He explains the wide range of hunter-gatherer society, which included groups who kept flocks of sheep and practiced basic agriculture. The “click-speakers” is the name Karim uses for this early group of South Africans.

Kwanele provides listeners with a history and a challenge. The history is one individual’s personal experience of apartheid and education, from the late 1970s to right now, in 2018. The challenge is very specifically to white South Africans, to stop being tourists and start engaging. To teach and learn respect. To stop narrowing everything into English. “To live with the joy and the sorrow, to have your heart broken by injustice…to be prepared to do the work of rectifying”

No-one in Johannesburg does one thing at a time, so podcasts are just right – a chance to listen to one person’s journey, while continuing on your own.

Johannesburg stories matter because Johannesburg is people. Other cities have rivers, seas, lakes, mountains. Johannesburg’s people provide the commerce, beauty and connection that waterways and geology offer elsewhere.