The WISER Podcast

Hlonipha Mokoena interviews Achille Mbembe

Hlonipha interviews Achille on winning the  Holberg prize, on their backgrounds, institutions and intellectual obsessions.

Bessie Head’s Absorbent Literature

In this week’s episode, Anneke Rautenbach discusses how, when the writer Bessie Head escaped apartheid South Africa and settled in the rural village of Serowe, Botswana, she remained haunted by the violence of her past. In her work on experimental development farms, alongside locals and foreign volunteers, she discovered not only a source of healing, but a subterranean moral philosophy.

Anneke Rautenbach spent time in residence at WiSER in 2022, participated in The WiSER Podcast group and travelled from there to Botswana to conduct archival research at the Bessie Head Papers in Serowe. She is currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature at New York University, where she is completing a dissertation on the role of the public intellectual in southern Africa. The PhD focuses on flashpoint moments in recent history when language played a particularly dynamic role -- from anticolonial prophecy to nationalist sloganeering to the metaphors of the HIV/AIDS crisis.

The WiSER Podcast Team this year is convened by Sarah Nuttall, sound editing by Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh and designs by Bronwyn Kotzen.

Cheikh BA: Riverine Landscapes in Senegal

In this episode of The WiSER Podcast, Cheikh BA discusses the Senegal River as an intense node of knowledge making. He discusses how those who live alongside it observe, name and think about its flows, quantities, evolutions, water paths and distribution. He also shows how,  in parallel and sometimes in confrontation, the "modern management" of natural resources translates into developmental and technocratic visions. He invites listeners to reflect with him on ways of encountering this riverine landscape, actually or in our imaginations.

 

Cheikh BA is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in WiSER’s Regions2050 Research Programme and works on local notions of environmental justice, decolonisation of environmental knowledge and the ecological history of territorial governance in West Africa.

 

The WiSER Podcast Team this year is convened by Sarah Nuttall, sound editing by Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh and designs by Bronwyn Kotzen.

The new nuclear age

In this week’s episode, Simon van Schalkwyk discusses our new nuclear age, the re-emergence of a long latent Cold War atavism, including the politics of containment and psycho-warfare. Online ‘nuke maps’ mean you can now simulate the effects of nuclear strikes anywhere in the world. He sets the location for Braamfontain, Johannesburg and sees what (would) happen….

Simon van Schalkwyk is a Visiting Research fellow at WiSER and a senior lecturer in the English Department at Wits University. His research interests focus primarily on poetry, both American and South African, and his debut poetry collection, Transcontinental Delay, appeared in 2021.  

The WiSER Podcast Team this year is convened by Sarah Nuttall, sound editing by Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh and designs by Bronwyn Kotzen.

 

Bridging the Bay: Maputo-Katembe

In this episode, Caio Simões de Araújo discusses the politics of infrastructure in Southern Africa, taking as an entry point the Maputo-Katembe bridge, inaugurated in 2018. Araújo argues that the bridge is part of a renewed public investment in infrastructure enabled by Chinese cooperation in Africa. Yet, rather than a straightforward road into the future, the bridge is embedded in a highly complex set of temporal landscapes  - ones that warrant close and careful analysis.  

Vampires: Pandemics & Politics

In this episode, Timothy Wright discusses the graphic novel Rebirth (2012), which imagines a node of vampire culture in the striated and gritty space of Johannesburg. He reads the book’s terminally ill vampires as offering a surprising, generative vantage point from which to think through some urgent social and political issues of the contemporary moment: whiteness, entanglement, transformation, blood imaginaries, and the global politics of immunity and insulation around the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
 
Timothy Wright is an Assistant Professor of English Literature at Bilkent University, Ankara and a former post-doctoral fellow at WISER who is spending his sabbatical at the Institute.

The WiSER Podcast Team this year is convened by Sarah Nuttall, sound editing by Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh and designs by Bronwyn Kotzen.

Two Treasons, Two States, One Family

In Episode One of Season Five of The WiSER Podcast, the Reverend Frank Chikane and his son Regotsofetse Chikane, recollect and discuss the moment – separated by 30 years – they were each arrested for treason – by the apartheid and post-apartheid states, successively. As prominent anti-apartheid activist and #FeesMustFall activist respectively, they retell their experiences  - and the conversation reflects on the state of a democratic South Africa, the current dangers it faces and what choosing to fight for a more democratic state has meant and will come to mean, then and now.

The Art of Meleko Mokgosi Part 2

In this week’s episode, we present Part Two of our mini-series on the work of Botswanan artist Meleko Mokgosi by Hlonipha Mokoena of WISER. Last week, Mokoena offered an analysis of Mokgosi’s paintings from multiple perspectives. In today’s episode, she speaks to the artist himself, a wide-ranging and fascinating discussion that takes up many of the issues introduced last week.

The members of The WISER Podcast Team are Sarah Nuttall, Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Isabel Hofmeyr and Achille Mbembe.   

The Art of Meleko Mokgosi (Part 1)

Today we release the first of a two-part podcast series that focuses on the work of Botswanan artist Meleko Mokgosi. In today’s episode, Hlonipha Mokoena, Associate Professor at WISER, discusses his work.

 

“There seems to be no better time than the present for us to have a conversation about what it means to be a black artist who paints black subjects”, says Mokoena, as she draws on her recent writing about the artist. How can we think about the politics of the intimate in Mokgosi’s work? What Southern diasporas within diasporas are revealed? What is Mokgosi’s version of black internationalism? And what are the meanings of his incorporation of images of Frederick Douglas in his paintings? All this and more is opened up in what follows. In next week’s episode, Mokoena talks to the artist himself in a fascinating interview that takes up many of the themes she introduces to us today.

 

Meleko Mokgosi was born in 1981 in Botswana. He is currently Associate Professor in Painting/Printmaking at the Yale School of Art. He is represented in South Africa by Stevenson Gallery and in the USA by Jack Shainman Gallery. His artwork may be viewed at these websites:

 

https://www.stevenson.info/artist/meleko-mokgosi/biography

https://jackshainman.com/artists/meleko_mokgosi

https://www.melekomokgosi.com

 

The members of The WISER Podcast Team are Sarah Nuttall, Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Isabel Hofmeyr and Achille Mbembe.   

Inside WISER

Today we hear from Najibha Deshmukh, WISER’s Senior Administrator and Adila Deshmukh, WISER’s Financial Manager. Najibha and Adila, who are sisters, give us their take on life at WISER, offering an inside view of everyday life, from both the front desk and the Institute’s financial office. In a richly nuanced and finely observed  - and often very funny – set of observations, they reveal aspects of their own stories over the last two decades, of the pressures and pleasures of their jobs, and of the lives, minds and foibles of academics at work. They talk about the joys of seeing students graduate and become professors – and about some of the strangest requests they received over the years. It’s a wonderful listen and will give you a new perspective on the academy – enjoy!

The members of The WiSER Podcast team are Sarah Nuttall, Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, Isabel Hofmeyr, Tinashe Mushakavanhu and Achille Mbembe.

The End of Mugabe

Dr Tinashe Mushakavanhu discusses the coup of November 2017 in Zimbabwe, the death of Robert Mugabe, and why it is necessary to build a new set of digital tools for re-reading the country’s history. The podcast grapples with the question: how do we read a country beyond an individual?

The members of The WiSER Podcast team are Sarah Nuttall, Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, Isabel Hofmeyr, Tinashe Mushakavanhu and Achille Mbembe.

WISER Twenty (Part 2)

Today we release the second of several podcasts marking WiSER’s 20^th anniversary. The Institute was launched in September 2001 and we asked a number of colleagues from Wits, the region and beyond to offer reflections on the last two decades of WiSER’s critical engagement with our country, our region and the world at large. In doing so, we also wish to thank all who have contributed to the Institute’s work over the last two decades, making it into what it is today.  

WISER Twenty (Part 1)

Today we release the first of several podcasts marking WiSER’s 20^th anniversary. The Institute was launched in September 2001 and we asked a number of colleagues from Wits, the region and beyond to offer reflections on the last two decades of WiSER’s critical engagement with our country, our region and the world at large. In doing so, we also wish to thank all who have contributed to the Institute’s work over the last two decades, making it into what it is today.  

Feminism. Generation. Activism.

In this podcast, we present highlights from an event “On Violence: An Intergenerational Conversation about Women's Resistance” held at WiSER on August 11 2021. 

Convened by WISER, the Governing Intimacies project at Wits and No10Publishers, the discussion features two feminist writers and activists, Zubeida Jaffer and Simamkele Dlakavu in conversation with Sisonke Msimang, prominent author and WISER writing fellow. 

The focus, as the title implies, is on questions of generation, feminism and activism in relation to South Africa’s violent histories.

Uprising in South Africa (Part 2)

Welcome to Season 4 of The WISER podcast. We begin this season with a number of event podcasts, capturing key debates happening at WISER on matters of urgent national importance.

Today we release a two-part series, Uprising in South Africa, in which commentators reflect on the crises in KZN province which manifested so powerfully in the events of a few weeks ago, variously referred to as insurrection, food riots and looting sprees.

The podcast is an edited version of an event hosted by WISER, The Forge and the C150 Chair in Gender and African Politics and convened by Shireen Hassim who holds that Chair. While the intensity of the events that erupted in those weeks has receded, the participants in the discussions we listen to today remind us that the causes are systemic and ongoing and we would do well to keep them at the forefront of our analyses going forward. Speakers inPart 2 are S’bu Zikode, Kira Erwin, Monica Laganparsad and Elisha Kunene.

 

Uprising in South Africa (Part 1)

Welcome to Season 4 of The WISER podcast. We begin this season with a number of event podcasts, capturing key debates happening at WISER on matters of urgent national importance.

Today we release a two-part series, Uprising in South Africa, in which commentators reflect on the crises in KZN province which manifested so powerfully in the events of a few weeks ago, variously referred to as insurrection, food riots and looting sprees.

The podcast is an edited version of an event hosted by WISER, The Forge and the C150 Chair in Gender and African Politics and convened by Shireen Hassim who holds that Chair. While the intensity of the events that erupted in those weeks has receded, the participants in the discussions we listen to today remind us that the causes are systemic and ongoing and we would do well to keep them at the forefront of our analyses going forward. Speakers in Part 1 are Itumeleng Mahabane, Glen Robbins, Thina Nzo, and Ryan Brunette

For Ryan Brunett’s short video, which many of the speakers refer to, see here.

International Contemporary Writing on Water

Our latest episode focuses on oral poetry from the Kenyan coast and its relation to indigenous marine conservation knowledges; black travel writing from the Indian Ocean world in the early twentieth century;  learning to surf and read waves in Cape Town; and the recent rise in postcolonial fiction about mermaids. 

Each of these topics, and many more, form part of a special issue of the magazine Wasafiri on "Water", edited by Charne Lavery and Stephnaie Jones and available here:  https://www.wasafiri.org/product/wasafiri-issue-106/. The issue covers multiple forms of writing on water from around the world - from the Philippines to the Somali coast, Kenya to Antarctica - in a time of planetary change. It forms part of the Oceanic Humanities for the Global South project (www.oceanichumanities.com) at WiSER . 

The podcast features contributions from Charne Lavery (University of Pretoria and WISER, Wits), Jauquelyne Kosgei (WISER, Wits), Asma Sayed (Kwantlen Polytechnic University), Hedley Twidle (UCT) and Betsy Nies (University of North Florida). 

The members of the WISER Podcast team are Sarah Nuttall, Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, Isabel Hofmeyr, Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Mpho Matsipa, Achille Mbembe and Bronwyn Kotzen.

China Africa Futures: Thinking Beyond Conspiracy

This episode focuses on the most prominent themes in global and local preoccupations with the models of government that China holds out for African states and peoples. We focus, in particular, on the threats and limits of state surveillance for African countries as they show themselves around the COVID19 pandemic, and the growing international concerns about the eYuan, the new digital currency championed by the People's Bank of China.  

 

The podcast is a conversation between Keith Breckenridge (Wits), Iginio Gagliardone (Wits), Mingwei Huang (Dartmouth), and Bulelani Jili (Harvard).

 

The members of the WISER Podcast team are Sarah Nuttall, Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, Isabel Hofmeyr, Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Mpho Matsipa, Achille Mbembe and Bronwyn Kotzen.

Regions2050: Mobility, Extraction, Circulation (Part 2)

The second episode of our two-part series on Regions2050: mobility, extraction, circulation focuses on the Congo Basin eco-region of Africa, the world’s second largest rainforest block after the Amazon. In particular, the podcast examines how significant demographic, ecological, political and economic changes in this region are linked to climate. It also explores the interactions between human populations and the environments in which they live. 

The podcast is a conversation between Rogers Orock (Department of Anthropology, Wits), Achille Mbembe (WISER) and Joshua Walker (Congo Research Group, Center on International Cooperation, New York University). All are members of the research cluster on the Congo Basin within WISER’s Regions2050 project.

The members of the WISER Podcast team are Sarah Nuttall, Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, Isabel Hofmeyr, Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Mpho Matsipa, Achille Mbembe and Bronwyn Kotzen.

Regions2050: Mobility, Extraction, Circulation (Part 1)

Today we release the next episode of The WISER Podcast entitled Regions2050: mobility, extraction, circulation. This is Part One of a two-part series.

 

The podcast is a conversation between Achille Mbembe (WISER) and Mpho Matsipa (Architecture and Planning/WISER) exploring the dynamics of mobility, circulation and extraction and reflecting on the new pathways of regionalisation in an African continent characterised — and sometimes saddled with  — multiple and porous borders.

 

The members of the WISER Podcast team are Sarah Nuttall, Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, Isabel Hofmeyr, Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Mpho Matsipa, Achille Mbembe and Bronwyn Kotzen.