In The Ring With Eusebius McKaiser

In this special edition of In The Ring With Eusebius McKaiser, I analyse the Jacob Zuma corruption trial that ALMOST got underway today.

The use of lawfare to fight internal party political battles is as South African as braai ("barbecue"). But the intersection of law and politics can be rather confusing. 

But don't fear- I've got you covered! I explain the essence of what happened today and offer a critical interpretation, as a political analyst, of the MEANING of the legal and political drama that is unfolding. 

Spoiler alert: the very foundations of our democracy are tested by the Zuma corruption trial, and it's implications for the ANC and society at-large.

Uber drivers literally have a front row seat watching the lives of a diverse group of riders who use the Uber technology daily to get from one part of the city to another. I decided to record some of the Uber chronicles of drivers in Johannesburg. I requested trips and struck up conversations with these drivers, who agreed to share with me some of the most fascinating stories of what they have seen and experienced, from random acts of kindness to acts of violence and criminality. Drivers, it struck me, are social scientists sitting on a wealth of data about their subjects, the riders. Enjoy. 

In this podcast, I analyse the late night shenanigans or the African National Congress. The secretary-general of the ANC Ace (Eish?) Magashul  has been suspended. It doesn't seem like he accepts the suspension. What the hell is going on? And what does it MEAN? I give my perspective, my interpretation of the madness.

Academic, author and analyst Dr Richard Pithouse joined me in this episode of In The Ring With Eusebius McKaiser to put liberalism on trial. I am a liberal. Sometimes, in the South African context, it seems like 'liberal' is expected to be an embarrassing tag to be labeled with, let alone one to choose for oneself. Dr Pithouse has written many essays over the years, critiquing liberalism globally. I wanted to understand his beef with liberalism, but I also wanted to make the case for why I find liberalism attractive, and why liberalism should be rescued in South Africa from some in the Democratic Alliance. This podcast contains the details of that dialogue, including many directions of conversation that I had not anticipated.

In this episode of In The Ring With Eusebius McKaiser, 20-year-old rugby fanatic Qaphela Gobodo tells the remarkable story of what happened when jealous peers at school poured paraffin on him, and set him alight. He was nearly burnt to death and ended up in hospital for many months and countless operations to repair a body that had come within seconds of death. 

Yet, despite the deep physical and emotional scars, the flame of hope inside this inspirational young man, kept burning, and kept him on his path to self-love, self-acceptance and getting back on the rugby field.

Listen to him in his own voice. 

Professor Steven Robins (sociology and social anthropology, Stellenbosch University) and Dr Lwazi Lushaba (poltical studies, University of Cape Town) debated whether or not comparisons between the experiences of Jewish people and Black people are of any moral or intellectual use. 

Various themes emerged including a debate about whether or not Dr Lushaba is essentialising whiteness in his insistence that the Holocaust is to be understood as "white people killing other white people". Professor Robins takes issue with this position. 

Questions about public memory, and whose oppression is privileged, led to some heated but productive disagreement. And along the way there is also a discussion about whether Dr Lushaba should take back his words that Hitler "committed no crime".

In the first of a two-part series, we focus on a debate sparked by a lecture by UCT academic Dr Lwazi Lushaba on the history of the study of politics. The online lectuee has now been widely reported on. The Sunday Times reported him as stating that Hitler "committed no crime" based on, by their own admission, 12 seconds taken from a 54 minute video. They declared him "Mampara of the week", 'mampara' being local slang for 'loser'. 

We explore here, in Part One, how truth, evidence and context are smudged by hasty journalism that aims purely to sell product rather than getting the story correct. We examine the implications for democracy and discourse generally. 

Chris Roper, deputy CEO of Code for Africa, drops in and carefully explains the factors in our newsrooms that account for such evidence-averse journalism, and warns about the implications for the value of truth. 

In this edition of In The Ring With Eusebius McKaiser, I ask whether Professor Adam Habib, director at SOAS, is a racist who should be fired for vocalising the N-word in a webinar with students. There are many complexities that these bald questions raise, and with the help of some excellent guests (Lovelyn Nwadeyi, a social justice strategist; Rob Berkely, who works on anti-racism in the UK; and Kopano Ratele, an academic psychologist and author), we work slowly and systematically through all of the linguistic, ethical, political and leadership issues that this incident has forced us to have a necessary public discussion about.