The Radio Workshop:
Giving Young People a Voice

Listen to the entire show

Welcome to the Radio Workshop podcast! On today’s show we head down to the beach to find out more about sharks – and we receive a letter from a 14-year old girl who survived the earthquake in Haiti.

A recent fatal shark attack at one of Cape Town’s most popular beaches has left many people scared. But as we discover in today’s programme, if you obey a few basic rules and keep to the shallow waters, you should still be able to enjoy the sea and stay safe. Today we’ll meet some of the Shark Spotters at Muizenberg beach.

No time to listen to the entire show? Pick and choose what you want to listen to below! Or subscribe to our iTunes podcast to get full episodes delivered to you every week.

Welcome to the Show!

Radio Workshop host Mbali Vilakazi welcomes listeners to the show — and surfers tell us how they feel about going into the water after a recent shark attack. 

The Radio Workshop broadcasts every Saturday at 12 noon on SAFM. Visit SAFM’s website for information about how to find their frequency in your area.

Shark spotting from Muizenberg Mountain

We drive up to the Shark Spotters look-out on Boyes Drive with Monwa Sikweyiya and learn more about sharks. 

Safety Tips when using the Sea

Liesel Lott and Monwa Sikweyiya sum up what to watch out for when you’re in the water and what the different warning flags mean.

Letter from Haiti

On January 12, 2010 a powerful earthquake struck the island nation of Haiti. We received a letter from 14-year old Coralie Norris who survived the quake that flattened large parts of the country’s capital, Port au Prince.

Coralie Norris, pictured at the UN Children's Climate Forum in Copenhagen in December 2009.

Signing out

That’s it for this week, join us next week for more from the Radio Workshop. We hope you’ve enjoyed the show!

Click here to listen to previous Radio Workshop podcasts. And click here to subscribe to our iTunes podcast to get new episodes delivered to you every week.

Listen to the entire show

Welcome to this week’s episode of the Radio Workshop.  Let’s take a look at what’s on the show today.

First, we take a walk along Cape Town’s Hout Bay Harbour and get a lesson on how to cook fish.

Next up, surfing champion Kwezi Qika tells us about the first time he picked up a surfboard.

As always, we take a stroll back in time with “This Week in History.”

No time to listen to the entire show? Pick and choose what you want to listen to below!

Welcome to the Show

Host Lesedi Mogoatlhe takes listeners through the lineup of this week’s show.

The Radio Workshop broadcasts every Saturday at 12 noon on SAFM. Visit SAFM’s website for information about how to find their frequency in your area.

Hout Bay Harbour

Today’s Audio Postcard brings us to the fish market at Cape Town’s Hout Bay Harbour. Our youth reporters from the Hout Bay Music Project get some advice on what to do with that fish you just caught. 

Do you like to cook?  Click here for some simple recipies designed for young people.

Audio Profile: Kwezi Qika

Would you believe that surfing champion Kwezi Qika used to be afraid of the water? What happened that changed his mind? 

Click here to watch a video of Kwezi Qika surfing.

Surfs Up!

Do you want to know more about surfing? 

Here are some sites that will steer you in the right direction:

Gary’s Surf School, Cape Town
Surfing South Africa
Surfing for kids in Durban
Surfing Slang in South Africa

This Week in History

This week we hear about a giant leap into outer space, a sunken ship, dealing with the past in South Africa, and as always, a few birthdays.

To find out more about what happened this week in South African history, visit the South African History Online website.

Sound Check

How good are your ears?  Test you knowledge with this one!

Thanks for joining us for this week’s show.  We hope you’ve enjoyed it. Feel free to leave a comment below.  We’d love to know what you think!

Click here to listen to previous Radio Workshop podcasts.

Kauther Sallie, age 8

Kauther walks towards the E2 ward of Red Cross, the section of the hospital for children with kidney problems.  She’s on a mission to record the sounds of this ward, and has her recorder and microphone all ready to go.  Kauther can describe the various beeps of the machines that have saturated her environment while in the hospital, and can tell you what each beep means.  She can also tell you what it sounds like if things are not going well for a patient. As we enter the ward, the nurses start to fawn over Kauther.  Kauther, like many of the other children in the group, is very popular with the hospital staff.  They often go out of their way to acknowledge the kids, giving them hugs and kisses, and anything else they can think of to make them feel special.  But before they could get their hands on her, Kauther vanishes.  She had something she had to do first—she had to go see her friend. Kauther jets past the doctors and nurses and heads to the room just past the nurses’ station where Maurice stays. Maurice is just 2 years old, and Kauther says he’s her very good friend.  He’s waiting for a kidney transplant, just like Kauther.  They’ve been through much of the same routine at Red Cross, and shared a room before.

Kauther and Maurice

Maurice’s big eyes see Kauther coming around the corner.  He immediately turns away from the nurse at the side of his bed, throws down his plastic rattle, and holds both hands up high, inviting her embrace.  Kauther gives him a big hug with a smile, says a few words into his ear, and then lets him get back to the nurse.  “I love that boy,” Kauther says.  “He’s on dialysis.”  I ask her what dialysis is, and she replies, “I don’t know. But they take you into that room over there and hook you up to a machine.  My friend is on dialysis quite a lot.”  Kauther then returns to her sound collecting mission, in search of the beeps, and slowly makes her way back to the nurses to give them a proper hello. Listen to Kauther’s story:

Fast forward a few years to 2005.  That’s when Kwezi won his first title, the National Under 18 Longboarding Championships.  Long boarding is “more chilled than short boarding,” he says.  “It’s more like cruising, taking it easy.”

Kwezi was the first black African to ever win a surfing title.

He is quick to shrug off conversations around race, saying that he gets tired of being seen as a black surfer “rather than just a surfer.”  Regardless, he realizes that it still matters.  When he started surfing he had no black role models to look up to.  His initial fears of surfing had partly to do with not seeing black surfers, nor black people swimming in the sea.  “I had to do [it] on my own—now that there’s other black kids coming up it’s great.”  He likes it when he has young black kids come up to him and say that “they’re going to grow up and be better than [him].”  That’s how it should be, Kwezi says.  It shouldn’t be about race.  It should be about making your dreams come true, whatever they are.  Still, he sees himself as a role model not just to black kids—but to any kid.

Kwezi has taken several surfing titles already, but he remembers the first one like it was yesterday.  His mom was in the audience cheering him on, and that was really important to him. She wasn’t too excited about him taking up surfing in the first place, he says.  “But she’s come around since the championship.”

He barely remembers what he was like back on that day when he first got on the board, and wonders if he would recognize himself.  “Back when I just started surfing I was quite scrawny.”  Surfing strengthened not only his body, but his mind too.   It has shaped the way he understands and relates to other people.  “Surfing has opened me up…It’s not a colour thing for me, it’s not a racial thing for me, I just hang out because I want to hang out.  I don’t look at your skin colour and say oh do you want to hang out?  I can hang out with whoever whenever.”

These days Kwezi surfs a lot, gives lessons for a local surf shop, and is busy studying for a business degree.  He hopes to get all he can from his surfing career, to continue to do competitions and take any other opportunity that comes his way.  He knows that there’s a life on the other side of professional surfing, one that he needs to prepare for now.  “Maybe I’ll open my own surf shop one day,” he adds.
Whatever Kwezi decides to do in his future, I’m sure he’ll give it his all.  Watch this space, Kwezi Qika is making waves.

Despite not being able to swim, 11 year-old Kwezi convinced himself that he was going to become a good surfer.  He soon caught the attention of Gary Kleynhans, renowned surfer and owner of Gary’s Surf Shack.  Kwezi told Gary about his dream, but that he didn’t have money for lessons or equipment.  Gary appreciated Kwezi’s enthusiasm, and agreed to give him free lessons.  Gary has taught many Cape Town kids to surf over the years, even if they didn’t have the means to pay for the lessons.

Kwezi says that Gary wants to get more kids involved in the sport, and that he sees surfing as a something that keeps young people in good behaviour and off the streets.  He taught Kwezi basic survival techniques, and got him comfortable in the water. Gary gave him a board and a wetsuit, and told him stories about competitions.

Kwezi made sure he was waiting in the water every morning before Gary arrived for their lessons, as he wanted to make his commitment known.  In the months following his first lesson, Kwezi quickly became a surfaholic.  Progressing from barely being able to stay afloat to becoming a terrific swimmer took lots of time, patience, and hard work—but it was worth it.  He surfed seven days a week, without fail.  His schoolwork certainly came first—his mother made sure of that—but surfing came in a close second.

Kwezi says that he’s grateful for Gary and his commitment to teaching other kids, because his life could have easily gone another direction.  His two best friends from before his surfing days in Muizenberg are now in jail.  These friends used to make fun of his surfing obsession, telling him that he shouldn’t get involved in “white” sports.  He should play soccer like other black kids, they said.

Kwezi says that he likes soccer well enough, but surfing provided him with a way out, with an alternative—it gave him a chance to see things differently.   And he sees himself as lucky.  “Surfing saved me,” he says. It made him “more calm, more passive, and more chilled and understanding.”  And that was only the beginning.

To be continued…

Twenty year-old Kwezi Qika has a lot to say about the waves at Cape Town’s Muizenberg beach.  The warm water makes for gentle currents and easy surfing. Winter waves are the best, as summer can bring harsh winds.  And when you fall off your board, Kwezi says, the beach’s soft waves cushion the blow.  It was on this beach that Kwezi first hopped onto a surfboard.

Kwezi Qika at Muizenberg Beach

The year was 1999, and Kwezi was eleven.  Back then he and his family lived in Muizenberg.  He went to school in the neighbourhood, and spent most afternoons skateboarding with his friends near the beach.  When his friends made the usual late afternoon transition from skating to surfing, Kwezi always chose to watch from the sidelines.  His friends tried to pull him in the water several times, but each time he refused.  Kwezi said that he wasn’t interested in surfing, telling them that “it wasn’t [his] thing.” And then came the day when he decided to take the plunge.  His friends came out of the water telling stories about waves they caught and moves they pulled.  “I felt so out of it,” he said.  He approached a friend and said “Bro, I want to surf.”  His friends were surprised yet excited.  They loaned him a wet suit and a board, showed him a few basic tips on the sand, and sent him on his way. In his first attempt in the water, he stood up on the board for about three seconds.  Kwezi said this meant a lot to him—he saw these three seconds as something he could build upon, as the beginning of something good.  Since those first three seconds, he says, he has been loyal and committed to the sport. In the weeks following his surfing debut, Kwezi went out surfing daily with his friends.  When the others would try to draw him out into deeper waters, he would refuse.  As Kwezi stayed close to the shore, he was hiding something from his friends.  He couldn’t swim. To be continued…