Styleskoops (English)

Welcome to Styleskoops. Today we’re joined by George Mienie, a leading voice in motoring, technology, and media, to talk about the person behind the CEO title. We’ll explore his life beyond AutoTrader—from weekends and memorable cars to electric vehicles, personal routines, and finding balance in a constantly changing world.

Today on Styleskoops we’re speaking to historian Mesrob Vartavarian, author of Privileged Minorities: A History of Wealth Concentration in South Africa. His book explores how anticolonial struggles, instead of dismantling inequality, helped cement new privileged minorities and exclusive economic advantages that still shape South Africa today.

Welcome to Styleskoops, where South African talent meets culture and powerful storytelling. Today we’re shining a spotlight on conservation filmmaking with the Creative Director of Black Bean Productions, Sam Suter. Black Bean Productions is an independent production house based in Cape Town that crafts impact-driven documentary and commercial films across conservation and humanitarian spaces. We’ll be talking about their latest work, including the long-form documentary Elephant Alone, and exploring how visual storytelling can change the way we see our environment and the species we share it with.

Today on Styleskoops we’re stepping into worlds where flying cows, malevolent forces, and black women heroes collide. We’re joined by writer and interdisciplinary artist Philisiwe Twijnstra to talk about her new short story collection, Flying Cows and Other Traumas.

On today’s edition of Styleskoops, we turn the spotlight on a powerful new South African voice in fiction, writer and filmmaker Kamanee Govender. Her debut novel, Stern Gods, is a haunting coming-of-age story set in 1980s apartheid South Africa, where eleven-year-old Kaathi Reddy navigates poverty, patriarchy, and violence in the Indian township of Bombayville. It’s an unflinching yet deeply empathetic portrait of girlhood, resilience, and survival in a fractured world. Kamanee joins us to talk about the inspirations behind Stern Gods, the silences it breaks, and the healing it hopes to spark in readers’ lives.

Today on Styleskoops, we’re joined by Erin Torkelson, a human geographer whose new book, Predatory Welfare: How Finance Capital Profiteers from Social Grants, offers a powerful, ground-level look at how South Africa’s social grant system has become entangled with debt, finance, and everyday inequality. Drawing on seven years of immersive research with grant recipients, Erin challenges the idea that cash transfers are a simple solution to poverty and asks us to rethink what real economic justice could look like.

Welcome to Styleskoops, where style meets substance and everyday life gets a little extra flavour. Today we’re joined by SA’s beloved “Giggling Gourmet” celebrity chef, cookbook author, TV host, and radio personality Jenny Morris. We’re going beyond recipes to explore how she lives, eats, entertains, and finds joy in the small moments.

Today we’re speaking to journalist and author Lynda Schuster about her powerful book, A Burning Hunger: How Tsietsi Mashinini ignited a revolution that changed the struggle, South Africa and his family forever, which chronicles the student leader at the heart of the 1976 Soweto Uprising and the profound cost of that courage on his loved ones.

Today on Styleskoops, we’re talking about a pivotal moment in South Africa’s history – the 1976 Soweto Uprising – through a new lens, a documentary history that brings together voices, documents and memories from that time. Joining me is political analyst and author Julian Brown, whose work explores how ordinary people’s acts of resistance shaped this turning point in our struggle against apartheid.

Today on Styleskoops we’re paging through South Africa’s past with historian Dr Noor Nieftagodien, whose book The Soweto Uprising — A Jacana Pocket History revisits 16 June 1976 and the young people who helped change the course of our democracy. In this compact but powerful history, he unpacks how a peaceful student protest in Orlando West became a national turning point and reshaped politics, families and communities across the country.