Sound Africa

Its fifty years since the world’s first heart transplant was performed at Groote Schuur hospital in Cape Town. But, there remains a persistent rumour that a black man called Hamilton Naki played a much bigger role than he has been given credit for. In this podcast SOUND AFRICA investigates and asks why this question still lingers all these years later. This episode is a preview to the new Sound Africa season coming early next year. Follow us on iTunes or SoundCloud and subscribe to our newsletter, to never miss an episode. ** Music from Spoek Mathambo, Felix Laband, Miriam Makeba and Michael Kiwanuka.

South Africans would already be familiar with headlines warning of the likelihood of enormous corruption in the nuclear procurement programme. Is this just hysteria, or is there reason to fear that we’re headed towards something like the “arms deal on steroids”? To help answer this question, we situate the nuclear deal in its international context, finding out what went wrong with a current nuclear programme in Finland, and getting a better sense of the Russian state-owned company involved in both the Finnish and South African deals. -- Find out more about Sound Africa at our website: http://soundafrica.org Like Sound Africa on Facebook: www.facebook.com/soundafricapodcast Follow Sound Africa on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sound_africa and Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sound_africa/ -- Sound Africa is an independent podcast collective based in South Africa. We focus on creative non-fiction from the African continent and are always looking for talented journalists and storytellers to collaborate wi

This is the first of a four-part Sound Africa series exploring the tangled web of South Africa’s nuclear past, present and future. Reporter Rasmus Bitsch begins this story at an art gallery in Johannesburg’s stylish suburb of Maboneng, where artist Vincent Bezuidenhout is shining a spotlight on South Africa’s secret nuclear history through his exhibition Fail Deadly. From there, we connect the dots between the struggle against apartheid, the Cold War, and South Africa’s development of nuclear weapons. How important was the nuclear programme in the close-knit defensive position, or laager, adopted by the Afrikaner nationalist government? And did the bomb contribute to the state’s siege mentality? What history shows is that the nuclear programme fostered secrecy and paranoia, and it arguably still casts a shadow over South African politics today. *We regret an error in an earlier version of this episode in which we incorrectly state that Che Guevara led troops into the war in Angola.* -- Find out more about

What will the future of South Africa’s energy sector look like? This is the guiding question that leads Sound Africa’s newest producer, Neroli Price, to paint three possible future scenarios. Speaking to a range of experts, activists and those trying out innovative alternatives, she takes the listener on a journey from paradise to hell, and ending up somewhere in the middle. Where we end up depends on the choices that we make now and who we include on the proverbial lifeboat to the future. -- Find out more about Sound Africa at our website: http://soundafrica.org Like Sound Africa on Facebook: www.facebook.com/soundafricapodcast Follow Sound Africa on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sound_africa and Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sound_africa/ -- Sound Africa is an independent podcast collective based in South Africa. We focus on creative non-fiction from the African continent and are always looking for talented journalists and storytellers to collaborate with. If you are one of them or want to get in

In this third instalment of Sound Africa’s Nuclear SA mini-series, Dhashen Moodley takes a look at the potential consequences of uranium mining in the Karoo. We speak to a Khoi-San activist who, drawing parallels with recent protests at Standing Rock in the USA, worries about the threat uranium mining poses to water supplies in this arid land. Meanwhile local farmers voice their concerns, politicians are enticed with promises of job creation, and mining companies continue to chase profit margins. Uranium mining in the Karoo is a potentially explosive story, with enormous social and economic consequences, yet it has largely been overlooked. -- Find out more about Sound Africa at our website: http://soundafrica.org Like Sound Africa on Facebook: www.facebook.com/soundafricapodcast Follow Sound Africa on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sound_africa and Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sound_africa/ -- Sound Africa is an independent podcast collective based in South Africa. We focus on creative non-fiction f

African Space - The Live Documentary is a live recording of a collaboration between Sound Africa and Encounters South African International Documentary Festival. It is a poetic journey featuring internationally renowned astronomers and townspeople of the Karoo. What they all share is a proximity to the biggest science project in the world: a giant radio telescope called The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) under construction. Sometimes the journey is intergalactic other times dusty and local, but it always takes place somewhere between technology and dream. -- Find out more about Sound Africa at our website: http://soundafrica.org Like Sound Africa on Facebook: www.facebook.com/soundafricapodcast Follow Sound Africa on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sound_africa and Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sound_africa/ -- Sound Africa is an independent podcast collective based in South Africa. We focus on creative non-fiction from the African continent and are always looking for talented journalists and storyte

Hilton Schilder's Catheter Symphony is a jazzy journey through the mother city and the hypercreative mind of pianist and composer Hilton Schilder. We get a musician's-eye view of what it was like growing up in the Cape Flats under apartheid, and an intimate glimpse into Schilder's current struggle with cancer. Hospital bed compositions and irreverent humour help this colourful and quintessentially Capetonian artist get through the hard times. -- Find out more about Sound Africa at our website: soundafrica.org Like Sound Africa on Facebook: www.facebook.com/soundafricapodcast Follow Sound Africa on Twitter: twitter.com/sound_africa and Instagram: www.instagram.com/sound_africa/ -- Sound Africa is an independent podcast collective based in South Africa. We focus on creative non-fiction from the African continent and are always looking for talented journalists and storytellers to collaborate with. If you are one of them or want to get in touch, send us an email: info@soundafrica.org.

The second part of The Wait Is Almost Over is finally out! In this episode, Yolande recalls the details of her and Pierre's captivity, relations with her captors, and the ever-present threat of done strikes. We also take an in-depth look at the efforts of the civilian negotiators to bring Pierre home, and how these efforts ran into conflict with government policies. -- Find out more about Sound Africa at our website: soundafrica.org Like Sound Africa on Facebook: www.facebook.com/soundafricapodcast Follow Sound Africa on Twitter: twitter.com/sound_africa and Instagram: www.instagram.com/sound_africa/ -- Sound Africa is an independent podcast collective based in South Africa. We focus on creative non-fiction from the African continent and are always looking for talented journalists and storytellers to collaborate with. If you are one of them or want to get in touch, send us an email: info@soundafrica.org.

In May 2013, Pierre and Yolande Korkie were kidnapped by Al-Qaeda. In the chaos of post-revolutionary Yemen, it was left up to an innovative local aid worker and his South African boss to secure the couple's release. This is the story of their painstaking efforts to track down the Korkies and the delicate negotiations that ensued. -- Find out more about Sound Africa at our website: soundafrica.org Like Sound Africa on Facebook: www.facebook.com/soundafricapodcast Follow Sound Africa on Twitter: twitter.com/sound_africa and Instagram: www.instagram.com/sound_africa/ -- Sound Africa is an independent podcast collective based in South Africa. We focus on creative non-fiction from the African continent and are always looking for talented journalists and storytellers to collaborate with. If you are one of them or want to get in touch, send us an email: info@soundafrica.org.

A reporter investigates the high number of reported occult crimes in South Africa. Among others he meets an archbishop, a passionate academic and a man they call God's Detective. -- Find out more about Sound Africa at our website: http://soundafrica.org/ Like Sound Africa on Facebook: www.facebook.com/soundafricapodcast Follow Sound Africa on Twitter: twitter.com/sound_africa and Instagram: www.instagram.com/sound_africa/ -- Sound Africa is an independent podcast collective based in South Africa. We focus on creative non-fiction from the African continent and are always looking for talented journalists and storytellers to collaborate with. If you are one of them or want to get in touch, send us an email: info@soundafrica.org.

One man shares his incredible story of fleeing war, escaping an army and traveling through the deep Congo forest and half the continent alone as a child. -- Find out more about Sound Africa at our website: http://soundafrica.org/ Like Sound Africa on Facebook: www.facebook.com/soundafricapodcast Follow Sound Africa on Twitter: twitter.com/sound_africa and Instagram: www.instagram.com/sound_africa/ -- Sound Africa is an independent podcast collective based in South Africa. We focus on creative non-fiction from the African continent and are always looking for talented journalists and storytellers to collaborate with. If you are one of them or want to get in touch, send us an email: info@soundafrica.org.

Africa is hardly thought of as a continent much involved in space exploration. But for the lift off of the Sound Africa Podcast we bring you two stories about Africa and space: First, The Afronaut: An introduction to a largely forgotten space program in Zambia in the 1960s. Did the leader of this wildly ambitious project, Edward Nkoloso, have a plan or was he just the delusional eccentric he was later made out to be? Second, The Telescope: A small town in the Karoo Desert of Northern South Africa has finally found its place in the world with the establishment of one of the biggest international science projects of our time. As the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) begins to take shape, we look at the telescope network that will likely transform the way we understand the universe and our place in it. -- Find out more about Sound Africa at our website: soundafrica.org. Like Sound Africa on Facebook: www.facebook.com/soundafricapodcast. Follow Sound Africa on Twitter: twitter.com/sound_africa and Instagram: www.