In The Ring With Eusebius McKaiser

Professor Francois Venter (Wits University) joined us to answer a range of questions including, among others, the following: how do vaccines work in the body? How long does it take before I have protection against covid-19 after being vaccinated? What is the extent of the protection I have (besides the duration of it)? How should I think about the side-effects? What are the odds of blood clots forming and how do I weigh that in my decision on whether or not to get vaccinated? Does ivermectin work? Can I still get covid-19 after being vaccinated? Can I transmit the virus after being vaccinated? Does a cocktail of vitamins and other supplements help to give me a higher chance of fighting off covid-19? Professor Venter answered these, and other, questions with patience, and clarity in this edition of In The Ring With Eusebius McKaiser

Former president Jacob Zuma has been sent to an unsuspended 15 months in jail for contempt of court by the constitutional court. He has now initiated two sets of legal proceedings in the hope of NOT going to jail. He wants the order to be stayed - in other words he wants the high court to help him not YET go to jail - while he tries his luck at the constitutional court, convincing it that it made an error in sending him to jail for contempt. 

In this special edition of In The Ring With Eusebius McKaiser, I explain WHAT the legal strategy is from Zuma and why, ultimately, he is going to fail, when the Stalingrad strategy comes to an inevitable end. 

In this special episode of In The Ring With Eusebius McKaiser, I explain and analyse why former president Jacob Zuma was sent to direct imprisonment for 15 months by the constitutional court today. What was the legal basis of the judgment? Was it sound? How did the court reason about the punishment aspect? And what was the basis of dissent by two of the court's justices? What, finally, is the political significance of this case and the likely political consequences?

Many of us become attached to our core beliefs, including social and political convictions. It becomes easy to dig in our heels, and to not be open to re-examining a cherised conviction you have held for many years. But this is not an intellectually admirable quality. We should be open to persuasion if we encounter good reason or reasons to abandon that which we have always regarded as correct (until now). The quality of our public debate depends in part on our collective willingness to be less hard-headed and more intellectually humble. 

In this episode of In The Ring With Eusebius McKaiser, critical thinking lecturer Jacques Rousseau (University of Cape Town) joined me, and we both shared several examples of when and why we had changed our minds on a range of issues. We also examined the reasons why it is not a weakness to be open to counter-evidence, and the implications for society if we fail to do so. At the beginning of the discussion, my good friend and fellow writer and broadcaster Redi Tlhabi shared a fascinating perspective and personal example of how she approaches the burden to self-examine an established conviction. 

Historian Vashna Jaganarth and filmmaker Michael Klein (who made the well-received short film THE ENDLESS CHAIN about Wynberg Boys' High School) joined me in this podcast episod  for a radical rethink of schooling. We are so used to accepting that schools must exist in society that it might be weird to even ask whether or not schools should and could be dismantled. In this podcast, however, we tackle the issue along two lines: first, we put the history of schools on trial and, second, we tried to imagine life without schools, however 'unnatural' that feels.

Click this link to watch the short documentary referred to in this podcast: https://vimeo.com/484581654

She is more than just one of South Africa's best broadcasters, her name neing synonymous, in particular, with Khumbul'ekhaya and Uthando Noxolo. She is a healer who has used her profound gifts to help many families deal with and repair broken social relationships and historic trauma. She is a national treasure.

But who is Andile Gaelesiwe? What about her own trauma, past, family, joy, and various trials and tribulations? I spoke to her about her book, Remebering, which documents the answers to these questions with a brave level of authenticity that will leave you moved, shocked, laughing, crying and ultimately with renewed respect for Andile. 

Concrete Rose, by Angie Thomas? is a story about Maverick Carter, a 17-year-old black boy, who sells drugs, has a dad in jail, and who learns his girlfriend is pregnant. But the treatment of the issues and quality of writing is what makes this book absolutely stunning.

Angie writes in the voice of the teenager, with authenticity. More than that, she helps us to get inside his head and his heart, challenging us to experience the full humanity of a black boy in a world in which black teenagers are only noticed, typically, when they have encounters with a criminal justice systehe various kinds of social structural violence of Maverick's community aren't shied away from, but it is rare to have these hardened themes explored without anthropologising black teenagers and robbing them of affect, of humanity, of dreams and hopes, of struggles...of vulnerabilities.

It is gorgeous to read a novel that renders black boys human instead of treating them as would be criminals.

Angie Thomas joined me for a discussion on this beautiful love letter to black boys 

I did an in-depth interview with Themba Maseko, author of For My Country: Why I Blew The Whistle On Zuma And The Guptas, about his direct experiences as a top civil servant who was pressured (without success) by the Gupta family to help them steal from the state. 

The phenomenon of 'state capture' has become part of the South African lexicon, and represents not just grand theft of public monies but also, therefore, a direct and serious assault on the very foundations of South Africa's constitutional democracy. In this episode of In The Ring With Eusebius McKaiser, the former government and Cabinet spokesperson shares breathtaking detail of how easy it was for a random family from India to come to South Africa and prey on its national resources, with the culpable assistance of corrupt people in both government and the private sector. 

This episode is of international interest because of its lessons about the importance of safeguarding public resources by protecting and strengthening accountability mechanisms, and establishin  a culture OF accountability. 

Despite almost thirty years of racial desegregation of our schools, many former Model C-schools and private schools are still institutionally racist or exclusionary in other ways.

In this edition of In The Ring With Eusebius Mckaiser, we talk frankly about what is going on in our schools, and what needs to be done to decolonialise our schools so that they are more just and inclusive spaces for all the stakeholders.

Author Sue Nyathi and deputy head of St John's College, Houghton (Johannesburg) Allan Magubane joined Eusebius to reflect on the multiple social justice themes necessitated by this topic. 

Is it morally wrong to have racially exclusionary romantic and sexual preferences? Can one draw a meaningful distinction between desire as such and the expression of that desire such that

race-specific sexual desire is ethically permitted but not the explicit, public expression of these desires? Is it madness for dating apps to stop users from expressing racial preferences in their desired

partner? More generally, should 'matters of taste' ever be subject to moral evaluation? Or, should we not simply leave sexual feelings out of race discourse? 

These are some of the questions framed and engaged in this episode of In The Ring With Eusebius McKaiser featuring two guests, Ace Robinson (who works in sexual and reproductive health based in the USA) and Oliver Dickson (who is a social and political commentator based in South Africa).