For Water For Life

 trailer  

For Water For Life - Trailer

#ForWaterForLife is a podcast series highlighting the story, the value and the scarcity of water in southern Africa. The series does this through fascinating storytelling with high stakes, aspirational lead characters, a joyful and inquisitive spirit and great production values. Hosted by Sekoetlane Phamodi and Gugulethu Mhlungu, the series ‘travels’…

Season 1 / Episode 0 1 min

Cleaning Up Cape Town's Water Canals

Georgia McTaggart is a woman with a plan to clean up Cape Town’s rivers. She is the founder of HelpUp, a community initiative which works with paid homeless residents and local volunteers to clean up and rehabilitate some of Cape Town’s most polluted rivers. To-date, they have cleaned out over 80…

Season 1 / Episode 1 19 min

Kusini Water - Macadamia Nuts and Nanotech

Murendeni Mafumo is one of many young South African innovators taking simple solutions to South Africa’s complex water and sanitation problems. He is the inventor of a water purification system that harnesses macadamia nut shells and nanotechnology to deliver clean, safe drinking water to communities which are not connected to…

Season 1 / Episode 2 24 min

Finding water with Oom Gideon

Gideon Groenewald holds PhDs in palaeontology, hydrology and geology and he has walked the Karoo studying drought. Using satellite imagery and prayer, he discovers over a dozen boreholes a week, most recently for Gift of the Givers, in drought-stricken parts of the country, with 90% accuracy. His story matters because…

Season 1 / Episode 3 25 min

Empatheatre speaking about Lalela Ulwandle

South Africa controls immense ocean territory. At over 1,5million square km, this tenth province of the country is larger than its total landmass. The ocean, most of which remains unexplored and unseen by human eyes, represents an extraordinary body of our natural heritage. It holds 97% of the water of…

Season 1 / Episode 4 25 min

Land, Seed and Water

Using memory and story, Zayaan’s work aims to revitalise our understanding of the relationship between land, seed and water as the vehicles by which our society was not only divided, but through which we can imagine and cultivate more closely connected futures. She brings us into close contact with the…

Season 1 / Episode 5 23 min

Water for the Future

From curb-cutting to build street-side seating places which double as sustainable urban drainage systems to weaving fences with alien invasive plant species to keep litter from blowing into the Jukskei’s gullies and canals, Hannelie Coetzee and Water for the Future bring design thinking and public art to respond to the…

Season 1 / Episode 6 24 min

Resistance is Fertile

For Nazeer Sonday and the urban farmers of the PHA, the immediate goal is to secure the aquifer, the water and every person who relies on it for their food and for their livelihoods. But for the long term, they hope to be the blueprint for how to strengthen food…

Season 1 / Episode 7 27 min

Mining Liquid Gold

For Dr Dyllon Randall, there is a real opportunity to apply the lessons the natural environment is teaching us about closing the loop on waste streams, and he believes it can be done with serious investment into the innovative and interdisciplinary collaboration that natural and social scientists are doing through…

Season 1 / Episode 8 23 min

Healing Waters

Gogo Mahlodi is one of thousands of izangoma living and practicing as a diviner, healer and indigenous knowledge keeper in Johannesburg. Through her practice, she routinely sees how the confluence of capitalism, urban development and the breakdown of communitarian social structures have alienated her clients from matters of the spirit…

Season 1 / Episode 9 25 min

Struggle Against Phosphate Mining in Cape West Coast

Nicola Viljoen describes the Langebaan Lagoon as the jewel of South Africa’s West Coast. It’s not hard to see why when we consider the beauty of the lagoon and the astonishing natural heritage it is host to. Nestled inside of the UNESCO recognised Cape West Coast Biosphere Reserve, the lagoon…

Season 1 / Episode 10 28 min

How to be an eco warrior

“Our Mother Earth is on fire, and we have to stop her from burning…because [she] is in our hands, we have to take her.” This was the message youth climate activist, Yola Mgogwana presented to President Cyril Ramaphosa and a delegation of the United Nations Population Fund at a climate…

Season 1 / Episode 11 27 min

The voice of the natural world

Her name is not just a name, but an urgent imperative to build or establish something, and what Makhadzi Vho-Mphatheleni Makaulele has spent a lifetime building is truly great. She is the founder and director of Dzomo la Mupo, an environmental protection and cultural advocacy organisation that been central to…

Season 1 / Episode 12 29 min

 trailer  

For Water For Life - Season 2 - Trailer

#ForWaterForLife is a podcast that tells the extraordinary stories of ordinary people in a water-scarce and unequal country. For season 2, hosts Gugulethu Mhlungu and Michelle Constant have travelled across southern Africa to better understand water in the city, our role in the water cycle, and how interconnected we all…

Season 2 / Episode 0 1 min

A sacred wetland in the city

As the Biodiversity Project Manager of the Princess Vlei Forum, Denisha Anand is passionate about working to rehabilitate and conserve Princess Vlei, a wetland in the Cape Flats. This wetland is a vital part of the community, not just for the fundamental role it plays in the hydrological system, but…

Season 2 / Episode 13 20 min

Defending the pale blue dot

Lewis Pugh is the United Nations Patron of the Oceans. As an endurance swimmer, he has completed a long-distance swim in every ocean of the world and has pioneered more swims around famous landmarks than any other person in history. But these extreme swims aren’t simply athletic feats, each time…

Season 2 / Episode 14 21 min

Water doesn’t come from a tap

Eunice Ubomba-Jaswa and Yazeed van Wyk are researchers with the Water Research Commission, a South African state entity that wants to find innovative water solutions through research and development, and to shape policy. Yazeed and Eunice are experts on all things water. From the hydrological cycle to the complex process…

Season 2 / Episode 15 18 min

Building better cities

The relationship between water and how we build our cities is complex. Water is integral to so many building processes; it is used in excessive amounts when we pour concrete and in steel manufacturing, and our cities need to be built in harmony with water to ensure proper drainage and…

Season 2 / Episode 16 24 min

Water and security

The South African Constitution is clear: “Everyone has the right to have access to sufficient food and water.” But how that plays out in practice is what Elizabeth Biney of Equal Education is passionate about changing. Equal Education is a movement of learners, parents, post-school youth, teachers and community members…

Season 2 / Episode 17 22 min

The life of a river

Through his obsessive search for the source of Johannesburg’s Jukskei River, journalist Sean Christie has journeyed below the city and dug up some fascinating, and at times squalid, insights into this river and how the city above it functions. For example, did you know that water has an isotopic signature,…

Season 2 / Episode 18 24 min