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.

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.

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.

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.