Living While Feminist

Today on the podcast I’m talking with Lenina Rassool.   Lenina is the producer and presenter of The Womxn Show [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6Ukk5-f14SAlED8skJ_mpotT02HxGBe4], a weekly TV show produced by Cape Town TV that focuses on gender-based violence and gender justice. The show launched in 2019 and since then has aired over 100 episodes – an incredible achievement.   For listeners who want to go and check it out, you can watch it on Cape Town TV or DSTV 263 on Sundays at 6pm, Tuesdays at 11am, and Thursdays at 9pm. You can also watch it on YouTube.   But the Womxn Show was not Lenina’s first foray into covering these issues. She has 15+ years of experience as a journalist, with a focus on human rights and social justice. She has worked for the mainstream media including for Femina Magazine, Cosmopolitan Magazine, and Independent Newspapers before moving into the non-profit sector, producing content across print and web platforms at Activate! Change Drivers and OpenUp (then Code for South Africa).   In 2017, she started at Cape Town TV as news editor and anchor of Our City News, then Deputy Director of the station in 2018 where she went on to produce the Womxn Show.   So today I’m going to be talking with Lenina about her work as a journalist, about the importance of covering GBV as an issue, and about the ways she’s found to take care of herself while doing this work.

Nechama Brodie is no stranger to the Living While Feminist podcast. We spoke in 2021 for Season 4, so if you haven’t listened to that episode please do go back and find it now.   Nechama Brodie is an absolute polymath – multi-media journalist, author, senior lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand’s School of Journalism and Media Studies, musician, singer, martial artist. She has turned her attention to so many important topics, and most recently to the topics of farm killings and domestic violence.   Today we’ll be focussing on her latest book, Domestic Terror, which examines the fact that – as the back of the book says – quote, “every day, more than three women in South Africa, on average, are murdered by their male intimate partners, the person who often sleeps next to them, who shares a bed, a house, a life, children”. This book looks at the stories of some of these women and unpacks decades of coercive control and centuries of state failure to protect women. It manages to examine this extremely important and difficult topic with insight and information, it busts myths in a fantastic way, and it is an extremely important read.   In an early chapter, Nechama writes:  “In my earlier works on femicide I have written how when a woman asks for help, we should listen to her. I want to add to this: when a man says he is going to hurt a woman, we should believe him.”   Later on in the book she asks:  “How do we tackle this? How do we teach women, their families, and their communities to change – because it is clear that while we are very good at marches and hashtags when it comes time to back and believe individual women who need our support before they are killed, we are not succeeding.”   So today I’ll be talking with Nechama about Domestic Terror, her work as a fact checker and myth buster, and her writing world.

Today on the podcast I’m talking with Derilene Marco.   Derilene is a creative scholar who holds a Senior Lecturer position in Media Studies at Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa. Dee’s research pivots around social and cultural practices and experiences of the everyday, particularly in relation to mothering identities, person-making and caregiving as labour/ work. She has written on apartheid and post-apartheid South African cinema, black women’s lives and stories and is the co-editor of Sasinda Futhi Siselapha (still Here): Black Feminist Approaches to Cultural Studies in South Africa Twenty Six Years Since 1994 (2021) and Transforming Pedagogy, a workbook for parents (2023).    Dee is the founder of the multimodal research project, Mother.Lab, which houses a mobile complaints space for mothers and caregivers, called House of Complaints. I'm really excited to talk to Dee today about her work.

Today on the podcast I’m talking with Athambile Masola.   Athambile is a writer, researcher and an award-winning poet based in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Cape Town. Her debut collection of poetry is written in isiXhosa, Ilifa (Uhlanga Press, 2021). She is the co-author of the children’s history book series, Imbokodo: Women who shape us (Jacana, 2022), with Dr Xolisa Guzula. Her latest book is a collaboration with Makhosazana Xaba; a collection of Noni Jabavu’s columsn from 1977, A stranger at Home (Tafelberg, 2023).   Atha has been a blogger and online commentator for many years and I’m so delighted to be talking to her today.

Today on the podcast I’m talking with Sam Beckbessinger. I had the pleasure of talking to Sam in December 2020 for Season 1 about How to Manage your Money like a Fucking Grown-up, and we talked all things money from a feminist perspective. So, if you haven’t yet listened to that episode, go back, and download it now.   Since I last spoke to Sam her writing career has gone from strength to strength and has taken many forms. Her interactive story about climate change, Survive the Century, was featured in New Scientist and Gizmodo. She also writes a very interesting newsletter which is always full of stimulating ideas. Sam is also an associate lecturer in the MA in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University in the UK where she’s sharing her hard-earned knowledge and talent with other writers. If that doesn’t sound impressive enough, just this year she has released not one but two books which we’ll be talking about today – Girls of Little Hope, a novel written with Dale Halvorsen, about two missing girls who come back, changed. And Moving to the UK: A Concise Guide for South Africans, which is a practical guide for moving across the world without losing your mind. Taking a look at Sam’s Projects page on her website also makes me feel inspired. She’s working on another novel and two super-top-secret TV shows. So today I’ll be talking with Sam about all things writing and what she’s got up her sleeve next.