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.
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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, pleaseclick here.
As the lights keep going out in offices and households, cable theft gangs across the country continue to pull up the metal and sell it for scrap. We are going to take the opportunity to talk about the science around electricity.
The Science Inside is produced by Paul McNally, Anina Mumm, DJ Keyez and Lutfiyah Suliman for The Wits Radio Academy, with funding from The Department of Science & Technology. The show looks at the science inside major news events.
Generation Y: Panelists at Joburg Radio Day discussed ways of keeping the youth tuned in. Photo: Luca Kotton.
The Joburg Radio Days conference ended today with a focus on the youth segment of radio consumers. Rofhiwa Madzena weighs in on the debate.
The Debate
Radio today does not focus enough on the youth , according to one of the speakers on this morning’s opening panel on the final day of the 2014 Joburg Radio Days conference at Wits University. Speakers on this panel tried to outline their various approaches to attracting and servicing the youth market.
Lerato Makate, programming manager at Voice of Wits said: “VowFM radio is more than just an on-air party.” She added that the perception that young people do not like talk and intellectual content on radio station needs to be changed. Makate said radio needs to focus on a combination of talk and music which is something “not many campus radio stations do.”
J.P Schlueter, formerly of German youth station Dasding, was also a part of the panel. He emphasised that even the staff of youth stations need constant reevaluation especially as they cease to be young people. “It’s important for young people to make programming for young people,” Schleuter said and added that systems in Germany are not favourable to youth development.
Schlueter argued that for success in youth radio, stations need to be radical and consistent but at the same time regularly make changes that keep up with the youth.
The CEO of Yfm, Kanthan Pillay countered the call for more intellectual content on radio stations whose target market is young people. After a comment from that the audience that “youth radio is filled with mindless fluff … it sidelines intellectual programming to an hour,” Pillay said the more serious content on youth radio needs to be “broken down into bite-size chunks” and integrated into everyday radio so that listeners can have continue to have interest.
Pillay did say that having a great physical presence in society appeals to the young people. This thought was shared by Makate who added that being on the ground allows young people accessibility to bring and discuss issues that affect them.
My thoughts
A great deal of the conversation that took place today was great in the sense that it stressed the importance of the inclusion of young people into all forms of broadcast media.
Generation Y (or is it X?) as we are known is the future and it is essential that the previous generation of broadcast media pioneers consider our relevance in an increasingly digital society, one which we understand and can navigate through better.
While there is the understanding that there needs to be a greater presence of youth radio in society, there seems to be a disconnect in the ways that this could be established. “Mindless fluff” works just fine for many young people and some radio stations capitalise on this but I think that in doing so, they have ignorantly chosen to look past other, more relevant issues and ideas relevant to young people.
It’s a challenging process to integrate the new with the old but it is something that needs to happen.
Even though there are some disparities in the way this process is supposed to occur it is encouraging to see that there are debates and efforts towards this end.
This week’s episode looks at whether the youth is prepared to study science at university level, and investigates a model of maths and science education from a high school in Limpopo that shows South African children can success with the right approach, no matter what the circumstances.
This week the Science Inside celebrates its 16th show by looking back at some of the best interviews and stories from the last few shows. Uganda’s ban on homosexuality, a way to study space if you’re blind, an update on those still obsessed with the Oscar Pistorious trial and the “Rising Star Expedition”, which looks at the famous fossil-finding excursion.
On Monday Wits Vuvuzela journalists, Rofhiwa Madzena and Thabile Manala were invited to an interview by radio DJ 88 Keyez at VOWFM. This following the backlash from various student bodies after an article which was published by the journalists about Mcebo Sisulu who, in the article confessed to lying about his identity.
Following the interview on Monday, Rofhiwa and Franz Kruger, acting Head of Department at Wits Journalism went on VOWFM’s current affairs show Breaking Ground to discuss the issue further with the EFF Wits’ Tokelo Nhlapo. The EFF Wits released an official statement slamming the story which published on Sunday.
This week’s show looked at the science inside the 2014 FIFA Soccer World Cup. The players, the stadiums, the health and injuries of this incredible event. We’ll take you back to our own world cup experience in 2010 and explore some of the technologies that will be used for the first time in this year’s world cup, in Brazil. What does it take to build a stadium and why is mexican beef bad for footballers? We’ve also got a bit of a shocking story about a TB clinic in Jo’burg.
Hydraulic fracturing, known as “fracking” is the process of drilling out natural gas from rocks. In this week’s show, the team went to the Karoo in the Eastern Cape to involve farmers, journalists and scientists on the issue of fracking. Mohair farmers are worried about their drinking water being destroyed. Shell (and the government) are seeing massive cash potential. And the scientists are staying typically non-committal. We dig it all up, chuck it at the wall and see what sticks.
In January this year two incidents of envelopes that contained a white powder – that was thought to be anthrax, a deadly biological weapon – were sent to SANRAL, the people involved with e-tolls.
Do you hate e-tolls enough to be a terrorist?
In this episode we get into that infamous powder: we look at the hysteria, how a lab tests for anthrax (mostly the powder is just talcum powder) and the previous South African government’s crazy history with anthrax as a way to kill.We’ll also touch on anthrax as a wild bacteria in nature and how there – on the fur of a donkey – it’s more likely to kill you than finding a powder in the mail …
MTN RADIO AWARDS: Mvangeli Nzuza won himself the News Reader (sport) award at the glittering ceremony at the Sandton Convention Centre last night. Photo: Provided
Wits campus radio station Voice of Wits (VoWfm) is celebrating a scoop of four radio awards at a glittering ceremony at the Sandton Convention Centre last night.
The team walked away with four MTN Radio Awards: News and Actuality Show: Law Focus (Female Miners), Drama Programme: Law Focus: (The Right Stuff and Female Miners), and News and Actuality Producer: Paul McNally (Municipal By Laws and Creches in SA Townships). Mvangeli Nzuza won the Best News Reader (sports) award.
Speaking to Wits Vuvuzela this morning, station manager Michael Smurthwaite said “For the station it is a great step forward and shows the year on year growth” as the station entered the awards for the very first time in 2013 and only managed seven nominations and one award in the Bright Young Star category.
[pullquote]”Law Focus is about making our community legally literate about their rights, that certainly deserves recognition”[/pullquote]
“It’s absolutely fantastic to obtain awards in recognition of work done, especially when the awards confirm, that in the specific areas you were recognised, you were the best within the industry in the past year … These awards also encompass what a community station is about. Programming that is collaborative and works with its community structures,” said Smurthwaite.
Three of the awards obtained are for programming created in partnership with the Wits Radio Academy and the station. The radio academy is the academic space within Wits University that focuses on radio and is home to the VowFM radio station.
Xoli Matomela, news editor and executive producer for the Wits Radio Academy, said “A lot of hard work with an amazing team paid off last night. Law Focus is about making our community legally literate about their rights, that certainly deserves recognition,”
“For all those who were nominated and who won, I as station manager am extremely proud and highly appreciative of their hard work, commitment and dedication,” said Smurthwaite
Around 2000 rhinos have been poached in South Africa since 2012.
Regardless of the efforts made to stop this, the numbers increase year after year. Will we be able to stop rhino poaching? By starting with the atrocious story of a mutilated rhino being found by Belgian tourists in The Kruger National Park , The Science Inside explores the science and technology of rhino poaching.
The following clip here looks at the organized crime networks behind rhino poaching and how the networks keep ahead of the technology.
Since her announcement as the Democratic Alliance’s mayoral candidate for Johannesburg, Helen Zille has dominated national headlines. In this bonus episode of We Should Be Writing podcast, hosts Lulah Mapiye and Bonolo Mokonoto dissect a media meet-and-greet with the mayoral hopeful. From her extensive political résumé to her controversial public utterance, we examine why the Democratic Alliance has chosen Hellen Zille as their candidate for the 2027 local mayoral elections. Additionally, […]
![Mvangeli[1]](https://witsvuvuzela.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Mvangeli1.jpg)
