You remember what Facebook did to you, right? Playing with your emotions? Manipulating your newsfeed? They used algorithms, maths and science to trick you. Here’s how…
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.
In your opinion, is enough being done by society and by government to support the victims of sexual violence?
No, there’s a really big gap I think between rhetoric and reality. You will always find good police officers, good prosecutors, and good people in the bureaucracy. But I think, on balance, many don’t seem too clearly interested, some have never been trained properly, some don’t have the resources required to do the job. And some of them really have an unhelpful, sexist attitude towards their work.
In your opinion, what can be done by the police and government in general to prevent sexual violence or to help victims of sexual violence?
I think one of the difficulties is firstly that the police have a limited role in preventing rape and domestic violence. But what they can prevent is serial rape and domestic violence.
Gender Activist, Lisa Vetten. Photo provided.
And one of the concerns has been that the police have been sucked in by the idea that they are chiefly responsible for prevention. And you see that in the targets they set for themselves every year. And that’s really not their role.
Their role is enforcing the rule of law. So their target should rather be around things like arrest cases to court, how they can remove barriers to reporting and how they can make the criminal justice system more effective so that somebody actually thinks it’s worthwhile to go and get involved with the police and the court. Because it sucks up a good deal of your life and your time and often you get nothing out of it except humiliation.
I think it relates to the point about the police and reporting because it’s important to be able to encourage those who have been raped to be able to feel they can speak without fearing stigma and shame.
But in many ways I actually think our campaigns needs to be around “How do we get society to listen?” It’s all very well to ask people to speak out but if people don’t listen, or if they listen in ways that blame, I think they can make the problem worse. So we would like to see more campaigns around listening.
Music is something that strikes a chord in everyone. Whether rock, pop, jazz or classical music, it affects people in different ways.
For someone privileged enough to grow up in a musical family, there is no doubt it has affected the way I think, react or even see things.
As a teenager, I was bullied throughout high school. Yes, the hugs, love and support from my family helped a lot but it was music that gave me strength to get through the day, almost every day. It was my escape (that and video games! Call me a nerd). If things were bad, I would literally switch myself off from the world, plug in my earphones and put on a hard-core Foo Fightersor Red Hot ChiliPeppers song. One of my favourites being Foo Fighters’ The Pretender – a song that, even today, still gets me through difficult days.
“What if I say I’m not like the others,” a line in the song’s chorus, taught me that being different does not mean you are “weird” or a nerd.
You don’t have to be ashamed of who you are or of what makes you, you! Not being part of a popular clique doesn’t mean you are worthless. In fact it means you don’t have to conform to their ideals. You can think freely and openly and do things that you enjoy without feeling ashamed or with the pressure of such cliques.
I wasn’t not facing my reality or in denial about my school difficulties; chatting with therapists, teachers and mentors gave me hope too during many a dark day. But music became my outlet – listening to it, playing guitar and singing helped me to keep going. As long as the lyrics flowed I was able to keep moving forward with things too. A definite life lesson learnt through my love of song because, if you think about it, music is infinite.
Music represents many things. To me, it’s patience – because you have to wait to get to the crux or climax of a song just as “all good things come to those who wait”. Tolerance – because you can’t love every piece of music that is released or played on radio, but at times you have to just go with it – it’s the same with life. You can’t connect with everyone but it’s important to tolerate people for who they are. And finally, acceptance – because lyrics speak to one’s heart and sometimes, through relating to them, we can learn to accept both the good and bad moments in life.
My love of music has not stopped during my time at university. Music can, and almost always does, affect my mood, thought processes or even work ethic. When I’m working or need a burst of energy, a little Benny Goodman goes a long way. Feeling sad, one goes the Ellie Goulding, Anna Nalick and Kate Nash route. For those happier occasions, well Pharell Williams’s Happy, some Coldplayor The Beatlescomes to mind. Music even gets me through the daily stresses of traffic – without it I almost struggle to concentrate on the road.
At times I even associate music with life moments. When reminiscing about old flames or heartbreak, Jim Reeves and Johnny Cash play on an unbreakable loop in my mind (and on my MP3 player).
Music is my life, it’s who I am and it’s what I stand for. I live with music and, better yet, I live for it.
Twenty years into democracy and we are at each other’s throats. Levels of dissatisfaction go far beyond the high crime rate and unemployment figures. I could list the issues which have caused most despair and conflict over the past few years, but they’re old news now.
South Africa is not the only country whose government appears to fail at every turn, nor are we the only society bursting with violence. But we are part of a country which is still trying to transform itself into a “rainbow nation”. And, I don’t know about you, but I’m more than ready for that to be realised now.
I’m tired of apartheid. I’m tired of reading about people who had to get violent to get access to basic human rights. I’m tired of judging, being judged, and feeding off a never-ending stream of negativity.
I think you’re tired too. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a call to arms. The message I’m trying to impart is this: I do believe that, despite the undeniable challenges still to be faced, we are actually halfway there.
Unfortunately, in many ways our parents’ view of South Africa and other races and cultures will continue to follow us as we carve out our future. The misconceptions and cruel beliefs we’ve had to see them struggle with and try to impart on us are a part of who we are, whether we like it or not.
I don’t want to go on a tangent about how we should make more of an effort to get along and accept each other – we’ve all heard about that. Ironically, it’s also what we’ve been taught alongside being taught to be cautious of the ‘other race’. We already know that we have to do better. We know that we want better.
There are issues that we must still face and they are serious issues with the potential to cripple the country. But our generation is nonetheless achieving what anti-apartheid activists fought for: we’re standing as one, despite our differences. For a long time, our history has formed a very real part of our present, but we are moving away from it now in a very real way.
Yes, it sounds dreamy and romantic but for the first time I feel that, despite every horrible twist and unbelievable turn, we are getting where we’ve always wanted to be. The very fact that our government has let us down time and again means that we’ve been forced to deal with what’s truly important. When we look back one day, we may realise that it’s the sole reason we’ve moved forward.
It would be dangerous and wrong to say the strikes, the protests, and the general apathy of our government have all been a good thing. But at least our generation is moving South Africa into a space where we can talk about uncomfortable things and accept each other for who and what we are.
There’s no doubt that things will get worse before they get better, and we all have a lot of work to do on ourselves, but at least we have reason to hope.
Nomalanga Mkhize is a lecturer in the history department at Rhodes University. She is a project coordinator for non-governmental organisation Save Our Schools and writes books for children in African languages. With Women’s Day nearly upon us, she speaks to Wits Vuvuzela about women in society and gender equality.
Given that it has been 20 years of democracy, have we made progress in developing women’s roles in society and enforcing their rights?
Yes and no. We have made a lot of progress particularly in terms of reproductive rights, free basic health care to pregnant women, bringing certain discriminatory aspects of customary and religious laws in line with the constitution, creating opportunities for women in the workplace.
However, we also remain a very violent and unequal society and women usually bear the brunt of that depending on their class position and living conditions.
Rhodes University lecturer and activist, Dr Nomalanga Mkhize.
What can be done to improve the equality of women in society?
There is no one single answer, but we need a framework that recognizes that patriarchal cultures and attitudes are the root of the problem, we can’t see the problems women face outside of changing the culture that sees them as secondary to men, particularly in the private sphere of the home and relationships.
But if we had a single solution to free women, it is to give them economic independence so they can have greater choice and control over their lives.
Is the standard of education for girls at an acceptable level?
The quality of education for the majority of children in South Africa is unacceptable. Regardless of whether they are boys or girls, our children are not getting an education that will give them future choices.
Of course girls face specific problems with regard to education relating to lack of recognition of menstrual rights and stigma when falling pregnant while still at school.
Do you think social media platforms are effective in communicating campaigns about education?
No they are not. They raise awareness amongst a small group of people but rarely translate into the real world.
How do you feel about the #WearTheDoek campaign?
I think it’s stupid and offensive. Whoever came up with that idea is insulting women across this country and should be embarrassed.
What do you think are more progressive campaigns?
There are many campaigns, I will highlight one. There are campaigns and research led by the like of the Rural Women’s Movement and feminists such as Nomboniso Gasa to fight against laws such as the Traditional Courts Bill that discriminate against rural residents and particularly women.
Is negligent farming common in South Africa? How dangerous is poor farming practice for humans and animals? Is science and technology being used ethically to improve animal health and productivity? Find out in Episode 22 of The Science Inside.
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.
South African journalist Debora Patta. Photo: Provided
Journalist Debora Patta is a familiar name in South Africa after more than 20 years in broadcast news. She has covered a variety of stories, including the trial of Oscar Pistorius and the kidnapping of more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls in Chibok. She talks justice and media to Wits Vuvuzela:
Given your experience in the media, how has the Oscar Pistorius trial being televised changed the face of open justice in South Africa?
What it’s done is it has allowed South Africans the opportunity to understand for themselves how the judicial system works. The interesting thing for me, I would get a lot of tweets from South Africans who didn’t understand the basics and would ask questions like: “Why is Barry Roux talking all the time”, “Why is there no jury system?” Perhaps because they have gained their understanding of legal processes from American television.
Has the Oscar trial set a high standard for what South Africans can expect out of our justice system?
The televising of the Oscar trial was very important because it gave South Africans an opportunity to see how justice can be done at its very best. Now bear in mind that is not the experience of the average South African. A lot of South Africans do not have the experience that Oscar Pistorius had with exceptionally paid and skilled advocates like Barry Roux defending him, the very best prosecutor put on the case. Every element of the case has been tested and re-tested and scrutinised over and over again. But this is the best case scenario and in a constitutional democracy as South Africa, this is the kind of judiciary that we should expect and South Africans should demand.
Debora, you covered the #BringBackOurGirls campaign in Nigeria. Do you think that is has received more media attention than the Oscar trial?
#BringBackOurGirls, in my opinion that is actually a far more important story. Because what it’s profiling is a situation that’s continued in Nigeria for many years now, it’s only gained international interest because of the number of girls that were abducted in April. Over 200 Chibok girls. That is why it gained traction in that sense but the story itself has been around for a long time and it’s actually to our shame as the media that we haven’t covered it more proficiently in the past. The hashtag itself garnered a lot of criticism, I think it was important because it focused worldwide attention via social media on the plight of the Chibok girls.
What has it been like working on the two most controversial events of 2014 and the international exposure that has followed?
I think the Oscar Pistorius case is not the most worthy journalistic story, let me put it like that, on some levels it’s a fairly tabloid story. At the end of the day it’s one rich white man’s quest for justice and we’ve spent an exorbitant amount of time covering it … Whether that’s right or wrong is another question.
Sunday morning epiphanies are always good for bargaining with your truths. Surely it has to do with the redemptive quality religion has attached to this day. Anyway, it feels as though the Sundays in my 20s are loaded with lessons thick and fast and not enough hot shoes, great sex and the no parents telling you what to do.
I am not sure how I believed I’d have life figured out in my 20s. Or myself. I am starting to believe it was a side effect of Oprah afternoons, Iyanla’s books and the quietness that refuses to settle in my head. All I know is I am not the only one with a minor OCD complex to tightly thread my life and feel an unwavering sense of control and certainty.
The business of living is never really “easy like a Sunday morning”. Growing pains simply will not allow it. But a quick reflection reminded me that I am in the second semester of a postgrad degree I am passionate about. Life next year is promising to be pretty dandy. So really, what is up with the tightness in the centre of my chest? The quarter-life crisis of the modern day homo sapien is what’s happening. Anxiety is our biggest enemy and so is the pop psychology that is constantly urging us to “find ourselves”.
There is nothing wrong with waking up every morning interrogating your own existence, choosing the kind of life that is constantly asking the hard questions; attempting to find yourself at every trajectory life calls a lesson. It is necessary, in fact, it’s exactly the kind of living we ought to be doing. But goodness gracious, can we try a little tenderness? Tracee Ellis Ross said: “I am learning every day to allow the space between where I am and where I want to be to inspire me and not terrify me.”
So why are we a generation saturated with so much angst? We are so uncomfortable with the necessary pauses. The moments when you don’t know, when you fail, when you make a mistake. We ride the highs too high and the lows too low – too much intensity, not enough patience. Of course the proverbial question of “who I am?” was never going to find a definition this soon. At the very most, my living has to open me up. Existential complexes can be really vain. But that’s mainly because the world has drilled an aspiration of perfect facades in our brains.
There are Sunday mornings where I miss Amy Winehouse. To me, she was every woman and every man. Her talent was condensed in her flawed humanness. She was authentic about how heavily she loved, how much pain she’d seen, the reality of finding who she was. All of this through the gift of lyrics. For me, Amy always sang the truths that I was sometimes embarrassed to think to myself. I don’t mean to romanticise her fall, but the grey-area person in me saw the light in the frailty of her druggie days. I think the more attractive thing was that she was unapologetic – when your mistakes are evident to the world, modesty can be pathetic.
I’m learning that audacity is a principle of survival. Sure, I don’t know it all and neither am I all that. But when peeling the layers of who you are – sometimes winging it as you go along is the only real way to fly.
It’s no secret that Jacob Zuma is a traditional man. With rumours that his health is failing, we wondered whether our president would turn to Western medicine or traditional African medicine should he become seriously ill. We spoke to a traditional healer, a medical doctor and a researcher.
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.
Seven months since the death of iconic former president, Nelson Rolihahla Mandela, South Africans gear up to spend 67 minutes of their day giving back to their country.
Nelson Mandela International Day was launched in recognition of the late statesman’s birthday, July 18, in 2009, by the UN (United Nations) General Assembly. It was in response to a call Madiba made a year earlier, when he asked the youth to “take on the burden of leadership in addressing the world’s social injustices”, according to the official Mandela Day website. “It is in your hands now,” he said.
South Africans have come to see Mandela Day as a celebration of Madiba’s life and legacy. The name attached to the day helps to promote the idea of serving society and doing charity work, which, for many of the more privileged is not an everyday reality. But it has also been condensed to a mere 67 minutes, as if all one needs to do is fulfil a quota to be a good person.
Mandela Day is about giving at least 67 minutes of your time to give back. Photo: Shutterstock
The official website and social media have helped to market it well. Filled with inspiring images, videos and the hashtag “#time2serve”, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are filled with selfies of people doing charity work, essentially showing off how much good they are doing for the world, as they play with sick children, hand out sandwiches on the side of the road and donate 67 of whatever it is their company produces.
This shows the “depoliticisation and white-washing of Mandela’s legacy” (to quote a status seen on Facebook early this morning), as a day that is meant to honour the memory of a great man has become a corporate event. A chance for people to tick off their annual charity work off a list and carry on about their day, their lives, their normally selfish lives. As if everyday should not be a Mandela day.
The positive effects of the day are clear: each one us has the potential and responsibility to do something good, for someone in need and if this is what takes for that to happen, then so be it. At least some of the individuals standing on street corners will get a meal today, terminally-ill children will have someone pay them more attention than usual, communities will receive the tools and utensils needed to create a self-sustaining vegetable garden and old age homes will be filled with smiling, happy children, looking to make a difference. This is all good and well, but then tomorrow will come and everything will go back to the way it was.
The poor will be no less poor than they were before, the terminally ill will not be better, the unemployment rate will have remained the same (or even increased), nothing more will have been done to try and fix the standard of education and schools around the country and South Africa will still be known as one of the most unequal countries in the world.
It feels good to make a difference or change someone’s life, even if it only for a short amount of time, but it should not stop there.
Mandela Day is a good thing, it is encouraging and inspiring for all those who participate (whether they are giving or receiving) and the message is that giving back your time, money or resources should continue for the rest of today and every single day after that.
“What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead,” Madiba once said. So make every day a day about giving back, a day that truly represents his great legacy.
South African Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer passed away at the age of 90 this week. Photo: Wits Vuvuzela.
Dr Karen Lazar is a lecturer in the School of Education at Wits University. She based her doctoral research on Nadine Gordimer and spent many hours interviewing the late Nobel laureate.
[hr]In the course of my feminist doctoral research on Nadine Gordimer, I interviewed her several times in her beloved dappled garden in Parktown, 2km from Wits.
In grey pants, black polo-neck and silver shawl in tune with the signature silver bob of her hair, Gordimer’s small elegant figure greeted me and took me through her stately house into the garden for the interview.
Not one for hugging, she was nonetheless gracious and interested in not only giving opinions but hearing them.
Whilst chatting, she offered me sponge-cake with my tea, and enquired after my small children.
Interacting with Gordimer’s mind was like being in a vast landscape as tall as it was wide, as brightly lit as it was sometimes sombre.
I felt her indignation at political corruption and intellectual dishonesty, her literary subtlety, her perfectionist commitment to writing many hours a day in the private sanctum of her study.
Gordimer was not one to brook fools, bigots or lazy thinkers. Many readers and students of literature do not find her intense and laden prose easy to pass through, but none will deny the robustness of her epic contribution to South African literature.
A loyal but critical South African, committed African, global writer that she was, Nadine Gordimer’s contribution to South African cultural life and thought will be long remembered.
Nadine Gordimer was born in 1923 in Springs, South Africa, and died in Johannesburg on July 13, 2014.
She was educated partly at home, and wrote and read widely as a child. She spent a year at Wits University as a young adult, and returned honorifically as a keynote speaker on numerous academic freedom and literary panels in later years.
Gordimer received numerous awards in her 90 years, including the Booker prize in 1974, The Commonwealth Writers’ prize for the Best Book in Africa in 2002, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991.
She is the only South African woman, to date, to win the Nobel.
Instead of complying with the custom of being walked down the carpet to receive her award in Stockholm by a member of her government, she chose instead to be accompanied by a literary comrade from her “government-in-waiting”, the ANC’S (African National Congress) Mongane Wally Serote, this being 1991 and transition underway.
However, Gordimer was not a slave, then or recently, to any government’s agenda or promises.
Gordimer was the author of 15 acclaimed and courageous novels, numerous collections of short stories, and several collections of socio-cultural criticism. Gordimer’s work has been prescribed in many school and university curriculae, internationally,where it has challenged, perplexed and sometimes annoyed students.
Professor Stephen Clingman from Amherst university in Massachusetts described her novels as “history from the inside”. Throughout her long literary career, Gordimer’s writing mirrored and problematised the changing tides of South African history and her own complex and self-reflective position in it.
Whether in the wide-ranging and ambitious prose of her novels, or the lucid, elegant prose of her short fiction, Gordimer’s sharp but sensuous language delivered her vision.
Her writing was drawn to the endless manifestations of power, within and between individuals, between men and women, between communities, between ideas, between epochs.
The heady space of intimacy in her writing was permeated with a politics that could not be shirked. Gordimer always shunned human abuses and parochialism, be they racial or religious or any other kind, but never shunned her responsibility, as a person, to make these known.
And yet, as a writer she claimed, “my first commitment is to my craft”.
How do you lose a plane? And how do you find it once it’s lost? In this episode, a pilot, an air traffic controller, a satellite tracking expert and a researcher working on underwater sensing technologies helps us piece together the mystery of the missing Malaysian flight MH370.
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.
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