Spudcaster

This podcast first appeared on the Sound Africa website, titled De Bijbel. My journey into exploring my own family tree began with the story of Krotoa . I quite stumbled on the tale of my own mysterious ancestor. All I had to go on was the name “Ouma Titties” and the idea that she may have been of Zulu ancestry. And so began my quest for my lost Zulu ancestor. Along the way I stumbled upon an old Dutch bible, which recorded my limited family tree.

This is the foundational podcast for my website. I work in the news media industry, radio is my lifeblood. Marketing, not so much! This website is my attempt at growing an audience for podcasts in South Africa. It is a largely unexplored arena in South Africa and I hope that I can make a dent on the market somehow. My focus is radio type documentary podcasts (far less than that passes for a podcast in SA today).

Transcript

During my career as a journalist, I kept coming back to the same story. Statelessness. The idea that one does not exist unless one has a witness to one’s birth. It is an idea that has persisted through millenia. If I choose to travel and I arrive at a place first, then it belongs to me. Birth of the number.

Call it slavery. Colonisation. Apartheid. Spatial planning. It is based on the assumption that one life is of more value than another. I dress this way, speak this way, choose to socialise this way, and therefore my way is the best way. Actually, no one cares that you conquered a mountain. You chose to do it.

Wherever you are, there you’ll be Human beings with the potential to be anything and everything they ever wanted, limit themselves daily. One human being might dream to conquer mount everest. Another will become the richest person in the world. These are simply lives well lived. You have the potential to achieve great things.

Instead, you choose to compete with other human beings. Bored with the mundane, you try to set yourself apart as different. The best writer. Prolific author. Award winning news journalist. Those were my dreams. All that matters is that, right at this moment, I am enjoying my life. I am writing. It doesn’t matter if you think so or not.

Everyone in SA freaked out about the “foreigner problem” when the coronavirus first hit our shores. They are going to make us sick. Coronavirus is going to kill them. No, they are going to do exactly what they feel like doing at that particular point in time. It only affects you if they are with you.

Self control Who cares what happens at the border with Zimbabwe? Do we really think that we solved the foreigner problem? I think we created a problem where there is none. Human beings are wont to move around to suit their purposes. They are pursuing their own happiness. It has nothing to do with you.

One person has stuck with me through the years. His name is Khumbulani Frederick Ngubane. He wanted to be a pianist. Instead he became a number. He was born in South Africa. Then his parents split up and his mom took him to Kenya. She died and he lived with an aunt who also died.

He wanted to return to South Africa to see if he could find any remaining family. That was his mission. His only goal. And he set off on this journey, which will go down in the history of mankind as the most bizarre. When he got to South Africa, he got kidnapped by armed robbers.

He escaped the house in the middle of nowhere and found the police. They returned with him to the house so he could collect the bag containing his number. The cops were too scared to confront the robbers. So they told him to go to another town to reapply for a number.

The number He did. They told him that his number was invalid and that he had entered the country illegally. But they gave him a paper to help him find someone, anyone who could verify that he was indeed born where he claims to have been born. When he arrived home, the cops picked him up.

He spent time in detention because he didn’t have a number. This was to be one of many times he would spend in a prison cell. At one comical juncture, other people who lived in places he had once lived were called upon to verify if he indeed had a number. Kenya turned him down. No, he is not one of us.

He has had no luck in finding someone to confirm that he exists. It must be terribly frustrating. “Where’s your number?” demands the policeman. “I don’t have a number” he replies weakly. The police puffs his chest: “Then how dare you exist in front of me at this very moment!” This is a capital crime.

So now Khumbulani lives without a number. Every day he lives. Off the kindness and generosity of strangers. He has experienced every form of humanity. Bureaucracy prevails. You only exist because when you were born, your mother had the good sense to tell somebody. Now you have a number.

It’s womens month in SA. I choose to reflect on a powerful historic figure who helped shape the land we know today. A Khoe woman named Krotoa was one of the first local people to interact with Jan van Riebeeck – the Dutch colonial administrator who founded Cape Town. Krotoa was Van Riebeeck’s interpreter, and was instrumental in ending the first Khoi Khoi-Dutch war. This is one of my favourite pieces. The SABC broadcast this story in 2017. For more podcasts, visit the Spudcaster page.

By far one of my most formidable interviews was with the then outgoing Deputy Chief Justice, Dikgang Moseneke. It is also one of my proudest stories, compiled for SABC Radio. I have reproduced it on the Spudcaster page.

Celebrated Human Rights Advocate, George Bizos, has passed away at the age of 92. From a teenager forced to leave his home because of war – Bizos became a South African civil rights lawyer of international standing. In the words of the late author Nadine Gordimer -he was a devastating cross examiner of apartheid authorized torturers and killers. The fight for a just South Africa continued until he drew his last breath. Candice Nolan produced this podcast as a tribute to George Bizos. With the help of Danny Booysen and Angie Kapelianis, for SABC Radio. Special thanks to the SABC Archive. For more podcasts visit Spudcaster.