by Staff Reporter | Oct 29, 2014 | Opinion
This week’s show looks at the dropping petrol prices. The team chats to the director and chief economist at Econometrix, Dr Azar Jammime, about the the oil price. They also looked at the eco- challenge and how to build a car that can travel thousands of kms on a single litre of petrol (ridiculous) and wrap up with how a car can be powered by the sun and win a race.
The Science Inside, the show that goes inside the science of major news events, is produced by Paul McNally, Anina Mumm, DJ Keyez and Lutfiyah Suliman for The Wits Radio Academy. Tune in live to VowFM every Monday at 6pm.
If the full podcast does not load automatically, please click here.
by Staff Reporter | Oct 22, 2014 | Opinion
This week we look at Matric Exams. The exams are happening nationwide and we are going to take the chance to look at how we can use scientific research to improve the education system. We chat to Dr Elizabeth Walton, senior lecturer in inclusive education and then we hear from Prof Elizabeth Henning, Director at the Centre for Education Practice and Research at the University of Johannesburg Soweto Campus.
The Science Inside, the show that goes inside the science of major news events, is produced by Paul McNally, Anina Mumm, DJ Keyez and Lutfiyah Suliman for The Wits Radio Academy. Tune in live to VowFM every Monday at 6pm.
If the full podcast does not load automatically, please click here.
by Roxanne Joseph | Oct 16, 2014 | Opinion
We chat to Vanessa Lynch, founder of the DNA project, a project aimed at advancing justice by increasing the use of DNA evidence. And we wrap up with an interview with Lynne Cawood, director of Childline Gauteng, who talks to us about dealing with the trauma caused by crime and violence in South Africa.
The Science Inside, the show that goes inside the science of major news events, is produced by Paul McNally, Anina Mumm, DJ Keyez and Lutfiyah Suliman for The Wits Radio Academy. Tune in live to VowFM every Monday at 6pm.
If the full podcast does not load automatically, please click here.
by Staff Reporter | Oct 8, 2014 | Opinion
This week’s show looks at The Nuclear Corruption Scandal. The team chats to Dr Tristen Taylor from Earthlife Africa to find out if we should invest in nuclear energy, as well as nuclear physicist, Dr Jacques Bezuidenhout on what happens when you blast a sea creature with a nuclear reactor. They wrap up with insights from Dr Petro Terblanche, of Pelchem, on how South Africa has the Number one deposit for the chemical crucial to making nuclear fuel.
The Science Inside, the show that goes inside the science of major news events, is produced by Paul McNally, Anina Mumm, DJ Keyez and Lutfiyah Suliman for The Wits Radio Academy. Tune in live to VowFM every Monday at 6pm.
If the full podcast does not load automatically, please click here.
by Anazi Zote | Sep 19, 2014 | Opinion
AFTER graduating from the University of Johannesburg with a BCom in accounting, Arabile Gumede, accepted an internship at CNBC Africa. He rose swiftly through the ranks most recently becoming a permanent financial news anchor last year at eNCA at the age of 25.
He spoke to Wits Vuvuzela about his career and being employed as a young person.
What was your motivation for getting into financial journalism?
The important thing for me is to be able to actually give you the underlying story of how important your money really is, not just for yourself but to the South African consumer [as well].
Has it been something that you always wanted to pursue and for what reason?
I guess, a lot of it is because it’s not a huge segment in South African journalism. I really wasn’t even keen on journalism to begin with because I did a lot of accounting in varsity. I actually have an honours degree in accounting. A lot of it for me was being able to tell that story.
Financial news anchor at eNCA, Arabile Gumede, talks about his career and youth unemployment. Photo: Luke Matthews
What challenges have you had to overcome while pursuing your career?
Well, I think there are still challenges every single day. [When] one is a young, black financial journalist, people look at you with a sense of “he’s too young to know certain things” or “he hasn’t reached that level of experience to understand certain elements”. That continues to be your stumbling block and you continue to take it and say “well, I’m going to grow from this and I’m going get to speak to people who will help me get to understand those concepts a whole lot better”.
Recently Stats SA released figures that 25,5% of youth are unemployed, 15% of these are black youth. Would you say this is a result of the quality of education South Africa has, specifically to disadvantaged black youth?
I’m 25 and that lifetime in itself doesn’t mean we have solved every single problem that has been faced in terms of creating jobs and creating an ability for a family to continue to create jobs. Understand that how a family creates jobs is being able to [in the Western context] take their kid to high school and varsity and that ultimately leading to an education, leading them to a job.
You are an exception to the statistics, how would you advise black youth to create a better future for themselves?
Nobody is going to do it for you. It starts off at a point where if you want to get to a certain place you are going to have to get there yourself. Nobody is going to give you favours, nobody is going to give you hand-outs, and if you do then you better grab those with all your might and all your strength and run with it. It gets really difficult and one thing for sure, what you get given, if you can produce that tenfold you are likely to succeed no matter what industry you are in. It’s about making what you feel is important to remain important.
by Palesa Tshandu | Sep 19, 2014 | Opinion
“I HAVE black friends”: a phrase that some white people wear as armour before entering into a racial battlefield, hoping it will save them from their history. It doesn’t. Instead it reminds us that black people are tokens in the claim for racial neutrality.
Apartheid’s residue left a culture of people struggling to reconcile what it means to be black with the people they really are. Some even reject this compromise, not wanting to identify with blackness because our history is so loaded with injustices. They do not want to wear the trauma of our past.
We can all agree that apartheid should never have happened, but it did and now we are dealing with its ramifications the best way we know how. And that means owning our blackness. 
Consciously black
Being black is one of the most magical things you can be. Being aware of your skin colour means having a deep understanding of the injustices that our forebears suffered under apartheid, despite how foreign that time seems to us now. This gives me a greater awareness of the inequalities we face on a day-to-day basis, even in a supposedly non-racial South Africa.
Black Twitter has afforded us a culturally loaded space where black people converge to launch a coup d’ètat against white supremacy and to find humour in the worst situations. This free space to discuss issues is perhaps one of the best things about being black.
When we deny being black we are in essence rejecting the part of ourselves that affords us the sanctity of knowing.
Using social media as a platform to express our hurts, fears and anger against racism, we make the decision to claim our struggle, label it and place it accordingly, without the misdirection of white supremacy.
Our melanin gives us the ability to soak in the natural goodness of the sun and colour ourselves with the light of the world, showing off the beauty of our skin tone. Our blackness affords us a space in two different worlds. We are able to go from suburb to township and understand our positions in these two worlds without being restricted by our own blackness.
Denying colour
Admittedly, ours is a society with people from different backgrounds and with different experiences of race and racism. It is part of our diversity that we are able to claim our own identities and celebrate them without judgment or fear.
Being black should therefore not be a default condition where we fear claiming our blackness because it’s loaded by stereotypes. We should rather marvel at this melanin cloak and wear it with pride.
When we deny being black we are in essence rejecting the part of ourselves that affords us the sanctity of knowing.This knowing allows us to see past the hidden agenda of white entitlement which caused disillusioned black people to believe whiteness was something people should aspire to.
Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie once said: “Racism should have never happened and you don’t get a cookie for reducing it.” But race denialism … well, that is an even worse atrocity.
by Rofhiwa Madzena | Sep 19, 2014 | Opinion
I remember growing up unaware that my pigmentation was my most defining feature. But as the years went on, an identity was imposed on me due to the fact that my melanin levels exceeded what was “acceptable”. This colour made it a precondition that I live the kind of life required of a “black” woman.
I remember one incident that made me change the way I viewed myself. My Natural Sciences teacher, Mrs Shaw, was on aftercare duty. Aftercare was a service provided to those of us not lucky enough to have nannies or mommies waiting to pick us up at the end of a school day.
During aftercare lunch, Mrs Shaw approached a school mate and I, and said: “You know, I’ll never understand why black people chew their bones like dogs.”
That remark shocked me and stuck with me. It became a constant reminder that the colour of my skin, the least significant part of me, would be the thing that always made me less of a person than someone who was white. And in some instances even likened to animals.
It was like the floodgates of racism had opened and washed me into an ocean where there was no island in sight. In that same year, I was called Rafiki the monkey by a classmate, who insisted I reminded him of the monkey in the Lion King. Of course, by now I knew monkeys were the natural comparison point for blacks, as doves are to angels.
It was as if life needed to punish me for the time when the colour of my skin was insignificant. I was broken.
High school and varsity perpetuated the blackness I was abruptly exposed to. And for a while, I went along with the idea that colour really did matter – until I made the decision that I was not going to allow non-blacks to decide, for me, that I was less than they were.
Interestingly, when I eventually moved past these confines, it was no longer the whites who caused me to be conscious of my colour. I just no longer afforded them that kind of power. Now it was my black counterparts.
Black young women were now using this colour as a scapegoat for all their shortcomings, exploiting the inferiority complex experienced by generations before us. They were buying into a complex which should have been broken down because of the opportunities we are able to create for ourselves today.
“An identity was imposed on me.”
The actions and speech of blacks has intensified this complex. They now impose their blackness on the rest of us who, with great effort, have tried to rise above it. Sometimes, even if you do try to fall in with this notion, it’s just not enough. If you don’t have what I like to call the comrade accent, for example, you’re just not black enough.
It’s boggling that even in this day, the 21st century, 20 years into democracy, the most important thing about a person should be the colour of their skin. I’m certainly not going to pass judgment on the choices people make, particularly when it comes to the way they see themselves. To pass judgment on the thoughts of an individual is practically criminal. It infringes on the freedom of expression and forces you to become a sheep. You then begin to act only as you are expected to, as a “black person”.
Make no mistake: I have never, for one moment, disregarded the history which has allowed me to see myself as no less than the white inhabitants of this country. I acknowledge and appreciate the strides made by my forefathers to afford me the liberated life I lead today. I am not ignorant of the issues faced by black people. However, it is also my argument that they also afforded me the opportunity to look at the country in which I live in a post-apartheid South Africa.
by Staff Reporter | Sep 17, 2014 | Opinion
The ice bucket challenge, which went viral across social media earlier this year, aims to promote awareness of the disease amyotrophic laterial sclerosis (ALS) and encourage donations to research. This week’s show looks at the attention the disease has been getting these past few months and speaks to people who are affected by the disease, here in South Africa.
The Science Inside, the show that goes inside the science of major news events, is produced by Paul McNally, Anina Mumm, DJ Keyez and Lutfiyah Suliman for The Wits Radio Academy. Tune in live to VowFM every Monday at 6pm.
If the full podcast does not load automatically, please click here.
by Tendai Dube | Sep 5, 2014 | Opinion
Professor Guy Richards graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand in 1978 with a MBChB degree. He went on to become a Fellow of the College of Physicians of South Africa in 1985 and acquired a PhD in medicine in 1992. He is the director of the intensive care unit at the Charlotte Maxeke Hospital. Professor Richards is also a professor in the department of medicine at Wits and a principal physician in the pulmonology department.
How and why did Ebola resurface?
Ebola is a virus that seldom affects man. However, as we invade areas that were previously wilderness, we will interact with viruses that are usually limitedexclusively to these zones. The reservoir host is the fruit bat, which itself is unaffected by the virus. It can however infect primates or possibly other animals and can then be transmitted to humans if they eat or slaughter these animals – so called “bush meat”. It is frequently associated with diarrhea and bleeding from the gut or nose etc. People who come into contact with these secretions could become infected, especially if they have cuts or beaks in the skin or they get the secretions on their mucous membranes or eyes. Women are most often affected as it is their duty, traditionally, to wash and prepare a body for burial and, as such, are most frequently exposed. The other problem is that health care workers (HCW) dressed in protective clothing look frightening and seldom can speak the local language. They then attempt to remove the bodies in order to dispose of them safely, which is in direct contradiction to cultural beliefs that dictate thata person should be buried in andaround the village where they lived.
Regarding the widespread panic: is the public overreacting or not?
There are no cases in South Africa at present. If there were, they would be isolated and spread of infection limited. Only people who have been recently in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea or, to a lesser extent Nigeria, HCW in Lagos hospitals or HCW who have dealt with such patients, are at risk. It will not “waft” across our borders and the prime mode of spread would be by air as those who are ill would not survive a road or rail trip from West Africa.
What precautions are taken to screen individuals at our South African borders?
Those people coming from West Africa are given a questionnaire regarding their contact with ill patients and all patients are screened with the “fever screen” device. This would only pick up patients who are already ill, whereas those incubating the disease would present later with fever.
by Staff Reporter | Aug 26, 2014 | Opinion
Can you give up carbohydrates for vegetables and protein? The Tim Noakes diet is the latest craze to lose weight.
The Science Inside, the show that goes inside the science of major news events, is produced by Paul McNally, Anina Mumm, DJ Keyez and Lutfiyah Suliman for The Wits Radio Academy.
Tune in live to VowFM every Monday at 6pm.
If the full podcast does not load automatically, please click here.
by Luke Matthews | Aug 22, 2014 | Opinion
Right off the bat I want it to be known that I’m a Christian. I grew up in the church, at first not by choice. My dad’s a priest and this gave me access to various churches and all kinds of Christians.
I’ve seen big churches, small churches, rich churches and poor churches. I’ve even been in churches that served as nuclear plants in the past. You name it, I’ve worshipped in it.
With these different churches came different people – people who worship differently to me. But some things stay the same. The teachings of Jesus Christ are always relevant. These are the basics of our faith, but we somehow forget them in our daily dealings with one another.
That’s why I made a list of the four fundamentals we Christians have forgotten. This is not an attack on Christ or Christians. I am not a perfect Christian, I am just an observer.
Number one: “To err is human, to forgive divine.” This is something we all forget. In traditional churches we have a segment in the service called “the peace”, when members of the congregation turn to each other, and forgive.
We greet each other as Jesus greeted his disciples after he was crucified. He greeted them in peace, because he wanted to show that he forgave them for deserting him. We hold grudges way too easily nowadays. We are too quick to say: “I will forgive, but I will not forget.”
Bra, to forgive means to forget. We must forgive in order to see the splendour of God’s kingdom around us.
Number two: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” In short, don’t mess with me and I won’t mess with you. We are too competitive, too confrontational with one another. We hurt each other.
We’re like crabs in a bucket, pulling each other down when we see someone rising above us. Haters are everywhere. They’re in your work place, in your class, on your social media. Let them be. I’ve seen too many upstanding members of the Christian community (even priests) messing with each other just for the sake of it.
Number three: “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s”. What this means is that God wants you, not your money. In George, my hometown, there’s a church whose congregation would give their last two cents to the church solely because the pastor convinced them that God wants them to give all they have to the church.
Now don’t get me wrong, the church needs resources to function properly, but there are people running churches like businesses. Money rules everything and the danger is we forget to listen to the voice of God. He wants you. The church wants your money, there’s a difference.
Number four: “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” Try this: walk straight, but look everywhere but in front of you. See how difficult it is to focus on moving forward if you keep looking at what others are doing?
This is what happens when you judge other people. If Jezebel wants to “twerk for real niggas”, let the woman twerk. You don’t have to do it. Live your life. Keep at your hustle. It’s hard enough out here, so focus on your life.
Well not all of us are perfect. “Let he who has no sin cast the first stone.”
In conclusion, the purpose of this list was not to convert people to Christianity. It’s not a warning for sinners to repent and it’s not a call for all of us to hold hands and sing: “We are the world”.
This is just my observation. And I hope it will make people think.
by Robyn Kirk | Aug 21, 2014 | Opinion
Adriana Cuhna, right, and Bulelwa Ndaba, left, star in The Book of Shade, one of the performances in the Sex Actually Festival. Photo: Robyn Kirk
Just three actors in two full productions took to the stage earlier this evening to explore, illustrate and explain the various roles and identities of women in society.
As part of the Sex Actually Festival, a double bill of performances took place at the Wits Amphitheatre, featuring few actors and even fewer props. The first, The Book of Shade was created by, and starred, Adriana Cunha and Bulelwa Ndaba and directed by Tshego Khutsoane. The second King of Ghosts, was a one-man-show by Modisana Mabale.
Cuhna and Ndaba, in a relatively short piece, took the audience on a journey through the roles women play through their lives, and the relationships they share with one another.
From washing clothes in a tin basin, gossiping over another woman’s “looseness” with past lovers, exercise routines, and the reaction to sweet nothings whispered by a man on a date, the two talented actresses drew the audience in the familiar lives of everyday women.
The piece was devoid of dialog but the actresses conveyed the tensions of the lives of these women through movement that said more than words could.
The second performance of the night was Mabale’s King of Ghosts. Set in a graveyard, this piece tells the story of King Ubuntu and his struggle to rule his people and accept the heart of his gogo ancestor, in an allegorical play about patriarchy in African culture.
“child of my child, women rule with their hearts, men rule with their heads. I want you to use both.”
Mabale was a kinetic figure on stage, clad in simple black, moving ceaselessly, as he played a number of characters: King Ubuntu, the spirit of the king’s paternal grandmother, the soothsayer and the dutiful servant.
King of Ghosts saw a monarch’s struggle with accepting the heart given to him by the matriarchal character, and the weakness he believed this would cause. A clever allusion to the human condition was carried throughout the play in the form of the king’s advisor, Isintu (translated from Zulu as “humanity”).
The need of balance between the masculine and the feminine was at the heart of this play, summed up perfectly by the gogo as she beseeches Ubuntu to accept her heart as she utters the words “child of my child, women rule with their hearts, men rule with their heads. I want you to use both.”
Both pieces focused strongly on the subject of womanhood, a necessary realm of thought in a festival that hopes to discuss ideas around sexuality.
The Sex Actually Festival runs until August 30, and the double bill of The Book of Shade and King of Ghosts will take place again on Saturday August 23 at 1.30pm in the Wits Amphitheatre.
