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Her Media Diary Episode 25: “Standing Up For What You Believe” with Phathiswa Magopeni
57 Plays5 months ago
Phathiswa Magopeni is a South African-born media personality, and former Head of News and Current Affairs at the South African Broadcasting Corporation. She currently sits on the Board of Directors for the SABC.
Phathiswa recounts her journey from her early life in rural South Africa, through her university years, and into her impactful career at SABC. She opens up about the struggles she faced, the lessons she learned, and the importance of trusting one's intuition.
Subscribe to Her Media Diary now on your favourite podcasting platform https://linktr.ee/hermediadiary
Learn about African Women in Media at https://africanwomeninmedia.com
List of Resources to Support Women in Media
· International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF)
· African Women in Media (AWiM)
· Public Media Women in Leadership
· International Journalists’ network (IJNet)
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Transcript
Challenges at SABC
00:00:02
Speaker
to recall an interview that I did on my second day at the ABC. And that's the time I started talking about the independence and impartiality of the news division. Somehow, there was resistance, even from within, from politicians and other interested people who wanted to know what it meant to have
00:00:20
Speaker
and editorial independent newsroom came in elections 2019. I then had to go around the country addressing politicians about how we're going to treat political parties because there was still a sense that including smaller parties in our coverage was a waste of resources.
00:00:37
Speaker
And my view was that that's not how multi-party democracy works, but somehow it was still not going down well, even though I could not pinpoint where the biggest problems were, because at some point I had threats to my life.
00:00:54
Speaker
And one time someone tried to force me off the road and I was driving out of the fuel station in my area. I don't know what was happening. All I know is that I had to drive straight to a police station and be escorted by the police to my house.
Introducing 'Her Media Diary'
00:01:11
Speaker
Imagine a world where we have gender equality and equity in and through the media. That is our mission at African Women in Media.
00:01:20
Speaker
I'm Dr. Yemisi Akim Babula, your host, and this is Her Media Diary, a podcast that captures the lived experiences of African women working in media industries.
Interview with Fatizwa Magupeni
00:01:31
Speaker
In this episode, I'm joined by Fatizwa Magupeni, and many of you will know her as the former head of news and current affairs at the South African Broadcasting Corporation, where she is currently a member of the board of directors.
00:01:46
Speaker
Fatiswa opens up about her early life, the challenges she faced after losing her mum at such a young age and how these experiences shaped her into the determined and independent person she is today. She also discusses her time at SABC, the struggles she encountered and her unwavering commitment to journalistic integrity.
00:02:09
Speaker
Now, throughout this series, we'll be in conversation with African women who have become media legends by virtue of their long years of experience and invaluable contribution to the growth and actualization of gender equality in a true media. By inviting these voices into conversation, we hope to provide solutions to break down barriers faced by African women in media industries.
00:02:36
Speaker
All right. So for Tieswa and Michael Penny, it is a pleasure to have you on the podcast. I've been really looking forward to this interview. You've got years and years and years of experience in the media. And I know that you also started your career as a lecturer, which is new to me. I didn't know that, you know, before I started researching for this episode. So it's really great to see, you know, your journey in the media from academia. And I look forward to really digging into that and getting to kind of
00:03:03
Speaker
understand it from your perspective. Now, if we Google the name Fatiz Vamago Penny, what we'll see is all the things we do at SABC, all the things that happen at SABC, but this podcast really wants to go a lot deeper than the things we can find on Google. We want to know who Fatiz Vamago Penny is, your earliest memories. So tell us, what is your earliest memory of being Fatiz Vamago Penny? What was it like growing up?
00:03:28
Speaker
Oh, thank you to eventually get to have this discussion with you. We've been trying to make contact over other things, but I'm glad that we've actually managed to get to have this chat.
Early Life and Upbringing
00:03:40
Speaker
I actually was born in the remote rural villages of the Eastern Cape, which is one of the provinces of South Africa, but a former homeland during the apartheid times, which was Transcai.
00:03:54
Speaker
I grew up then, in fact, I spent the first 20 years of my life in that environment. And so I did my schooling, early schooling up until high school in preparation for university. That was the only time when I treated my high school schooling that I actually left the province to go to the city, which was Cape Town, which is when I got to do my first university degree. But growing up, I lost my mother at eight.
00:04:23
Speaker
and I have four siblings and at the time of my mother's demise she was giving back to the last born and you can imagine the kind of environment that we ended up in and in fact when we joke about it at home we would say because we had to be split two of us were sent to live with relatives and we two of us remained at home and my brother was taken elsewhere so say those who left home were in exile
00:04:53
Speaker
And so we had to remain at home and face the hardships of being at home because my father was working about a thousand kilometers from home. He was working in Cape Town in the dockyard. It was a ship environment, shipping environment.
00:05:07
Speaker
So staying at home having to struggle in the years of my mother's death actually exposed me to a lot of hardships because for me it was like a preparation of what I was dealing with in my adult life because every time I look back I keep saying it was worse than this before.
00:05:26
Speaker
So this country could have been broken at the time. But again, in a true African sense, it doesn't matter what your situation is. If you grow up in an environment where you don't have parents, you are always a child of the community, which is actually what shaped my young life.
00:05:44
Speaker
because you had all these people around you who tried to shield us from hunger and shield us from all sorts of things that would have been exposed to. And in fact, sometimes I usually say, I'm glad that I grew up in that environment and not a city environment because things could have turned out differently if I'd grown up in a city without my mother.
00:06:07
Speaker
I do think that there was an element of being fortunate that it happened while I was in the rural environment, where people still cared about the next door neighbor's child. So then I then left the rural environment and I went to Varsity. But typical of someone who had grown up, it's something that I used to joke about in the newsroom. When I got to Varsity, it was the first time
00:06:31
Speaker
to get exposed to people who speak English in a different accent, let alone the fact that you were not even exposed to proper English where you grew up in your schooling. And now you're sitting in this environment for the first time you have to listen to a teacher who's a white person.
00:06:48
Speaker
as speaking English or speaking Africans or a different language. And so the accent is going to be different. We had to sit, we would literally, coming from the villages, sit in the front row in the lecture hall so that we could read the lips because listening to them was so difficult that we actually had to sit in front and read the lips. But what was the joke was that typically people would sit in the front and those people are going to be asking questions because they're that confident.
00:07:16
Speaker
We would sit there, not because we were confident to be able to respond to what the lecturer would be saying. For us, it was like, I need to make sure that I get a grasp of what the lecturer is saying, so I need to sit in front. Not because I'm going to raise my hand. I don't have that kind of confidence. So all of that, that the transition from a rural environment and a rural education,
00:07:37
Speaker
and getting into the city and you are now at Varsity, you have to deal with these. The computer, it was the first time that I got exposed to using a computer in us at Varsity because we had to type our assignments. So I never had formal training on using a computer. I learned it as I had to process my assignments and there was a computer lab.
00:07:55
Speaker
the University of Western people I studied. So basically almost everything that happened in my childhood translated into something else in my adulthood. So it's the things that I had experienced that were sort of preparing me for what I was going to deal with in my adult life. So it wasn't an easy one. So was that the same university you then became a lecturer in? Yes, yes. I started lecturing there.
00:08:18
Speaker
In fact, I started tutoring when I was doing my third year. So I would assemble as groups and would be sharing lessons. And people thought that I knew better. And I ended up being appointment by the department of Isakosa, which is one of these official languages at the time, to be a tutor for the department. But then I became a part-time lecturer and then a full-time lecturer in 1985.
00:08:42
Speaker
So it was an interesting journey, but being in an environment where you now have to face people who have things that you don't have adversity. I had some relatives in the townships, so on weekends I would say, I'm leaving campus, I'm going to visit my relatives in the townships, and I knew that I wasn't doing that, but it's because I had nothing, I wouldn't have regulations, I wouldn't have soap, I wouldn't have
00:09:05
Speaker
toothbrush and toothpaste. So for me, that was the moment that I would travel to the suburbs in Cape Town, look for domestic chores and start doing ironing and cleaning of people's houses and come back to campus late. And I had the money that would take me through the week and buy food because I had no access to the dining hall. I had no scholarship. I had nothing.
00:09:26
Speaker
All I had was accommodation in the race, but I had no access to the dining hall. So I had to make things work when I
Overcoming Poverty
00:09:32
Speaker
was on campus. And how did all of that shape who you became in terms of having to
00:09:37
Speaker
live that double life and having to kind of just find your way and go through university in a way that you could, you know, at the time. I think one of the things that happened, I look back now and think because one of things that I haven't been able to overcome, I can't make friends, I do not make friends.
00:09:58
Speaker
Till today. To date. I can't make friends. I don't know how to make friends. I don't know how to, and in fact I've stopped bothering. I'm alone now. I do things and in fact it does help me to some extent because I take responsibility for the decisions that I make because I don't have to ask anyone and I'm not going to see advice from anyone and look back and say I wish I had done this thing differently if I had not taken that advice. So I take full responsibility for everything that I do because it's my decision.
00:10:25
Speaker
It's not influenced by anyone else. But what happened in my childhood? For some reason, I drew a lot of attention to myself because I was a loner, even as a child, I was a loner. So I would be at school. During breaks, I would go and hide behind the classrooms because one, I had nothing like a lunchbox. So for me, it was me not going to expose myself.
00:10:49
Speaker
by begging other children for whatever they had because I had nothing. I had nothing from home. In fact, I would go back home to sleep on an empty tummy because there was nothing at home. So as a result of that, because that shielded me from scrutiny.
00:11:04
Speaker
So no one knew what was happening in my life. And even adversity that I ended up doing domestic chores and not telling anyone that I was actually doing domestic chores to get money for anything that I needed. It meant that I needed to protect my space that no one got to know what was happening in my life.
00:11:21
Speaker
So that translated to my adult life that I made my own decisions and to date, no one knows what's happening in my life. And in fact, I've had a number of people who would say, just tell me, who are you? I see all the stuff that's being said about you and that's available out there about you. But who are you? And it's like, no, that's always available about me. So I've always had this shield around myself so that no one is able to penetrate and know exactly what's going on in my life.
00:11:49
Speaker
So it did affect me. But in some of the cases, I mean, the stuff that I've gone through at different stages of my life, I do think that at times, I had people
00:12:02
Speaker
who I was close to or who were close to me, I would have been shielded from some of the things that happened to me. I'm thinking of my marriage that collapsed. It was a very difficult thing that I discovered in my marriage that led to it collapsing. But even then, I couldn't share that information with anyone except the person who was involved. I couldn't share it even with my family. They only discovered later that actually I had this huge problem.
00:12:26
Speaker
So I've always had to deal with these things myself to the point where at times I do think that things would have turned out differently in some of the cases had I had people that I spoke to.
00:12:39
Speaker
But I want to go back to 8 year old Fatiswa when your mom sadly passed away. Can you take us through that period and how that was for you at that
Impact of Mother's Death
00:12:51
Speaker
time? It was hard and in fact some of the things that happened then, I carried them in my body.
00:12:58
Speaker
When people, in fact, if I go to these beauty salons, I want to do my dance or I want to do my feet, it has become a joke and I've always used the same person to do my feet. Because I have had souls. I had four years of walking to and from school without shoes. Season in, season out. I had no shoes.
00:13:20
Speaker
So it doesn't matter the level of manicure and waxing that you can put my feet through, the soles of my feet hurt. That's not going to change. So when I say I carry some of those experiences in my body, I mean it in every sense.
00:13:36
Speaker
And because my mother was a trained teacher, but at the time, I don't know whether it was a law that when you got married, you were not supposed to be a professional as in a teacher or an S, but you had to be a stay-at-home mom while my father was a migrant laborer. So I never got to experience my mother as a teacher because when we were born, she was really a stay-at-home mom. And she was a very hardworking individual.
00:14:04
Speaker
We look back at things that we had at home. We infect some of the things that we see as new age stuff. My mother introduced us to those things. So when she passed on and we lost all of that, it was a
00:14:21
Speaker
hard transition for us. It was a very hard transition for us to transition from a life where we had everything. My father was working in Cape Town and my mother had this small holding kind of idea. She was farming like small, small holding in the sense of
00:14:40
Speaker
substance and farming. We had livestock. I remember we had about 100 sheep when she passed on, which I used to look after. And my younger brother used to look after the goats that were in the 70s. And there was another boy who was staying with us from my aunt, and he used to look after the cattle. So it was split. And
00:14:59
Speaker
My mother had this thing that if you're part of the livestock, one of the sheep or one of the goats doesn't come back on that day with the rest of the stock. You were not going to have supper. So you left. You went back to the couch.
00:15:17
Speaker
And there was a punishment. And the second part was you were not going to sleep inside the house until you found it in the morning because you had to wake up from the crawl and go to the village and go door to door and look for it because you would know
00:15:34
Speaker
that the grazing land where we sent our livestock, it used to be with these families and the other families, so you would know exactly where to look when one of the sheep or cattle were lost. So that's how our mother groomed us, that there were always consequences for any decisions that you made, there were always consequences. And my neighbors would say at the time,
00:15:56
Speaker
my mother was mistreating us. And in fact, I remember one woman who would come when our mother was punishing us or beating us up for whatever that would have done. And I actually recall this woman saying, my mother's name was Nonya Merko.
00:16:13
Speaker
is basically the diligent one, which is, that's how it turns out, like Nonya Merko. And she would say, Nonya, maybe I'm going to kill these children. And my mother would say, leave them. You don't know what's going to happen when I'm not here. And it's only when we look back and these women are relating these stories that it's as if she knew that she was going to leave us.
00:16:33
Speaker
I mean, at the point my mother passed on, I could prepare dough for bread. I could cook some basic stuff at age eight. I could do most of the stuff at age eight because at times when she would visit my father in Cape Town, she would just tell the neighbors that look after that house, but those people know how to cook for themselves. And that's us at my young age. So it was a very hard period when she left us.
00:16:58
Speaker
It didn't help that some of the family members helped themselves to our clothes and some of the things that my mother had. That's how I lost a pair of shoes that I had for school. I lost my uniform. I lost a lot of stuff and I was left with a few items that I kept recycling because I had nothing else. In fact, I had one jersey.
00:17:19
Speaker
I remember it was blue with shiny buttons and that's all I had as a JZ. It didn't matter what the season was, that's all I had. And in fact, going to my father in his late years, because he passed on in 2007 and he was with me when he passed on, and I would ask him.
00:17:35
Speaker
What happened to him when my mother passed on? Because we could still sense the sense of brokenness in him. He got married later to one woman and it didn't work out and he got married again and that also didn't work out. So they didn't have these conversations now that I'm an adult and I would ask him what happened to you?
00:17:53
Speaker
And my father said he gave up because he realized that he kept looking for my mother in all the women he met. He wouldn't find her and he decided to give up at the end. So she was that type of a person. So it was a huge loss for us. It was a huge loss.
00:18:11
Speaker
When people look back and say, if your mother was still around, what do you think would have happened to you? I actually don't know. I don't know. Because all I know is that you are a disciplinarian. You are a disciplinarian. So we usually joke about the young one because she was giving birth. So this one never got to see my mother. So every time he goes off track, we always remind him that you missed that. You would be on track.
00:18:42
Speaker
And in fact I got to a point where even though I was young, I basically had to look after my younger brother who was with me at home at the time, even though the family had
00:18:54
Speaker
thought someone else's relative was going to come and stay with us. It didn't work properly, but at least there was someone who was with us. But it still didn't shield us from the poverty that we had to face when my mother was gone. So I would have to go with the villagers to look after whatever that needed to be attended to in the fields.
00:19:16
Speaker
And that's when I learned how in the fields, I learned how to harvest maize and whatever else that was taking place at the time for us to get a shade from whatever they had from the fields. So that's how we got to get food. And I recall times when I would spend the whole day. So you have to go and collect the wood so that you can cook because that was our source of energy. There was nothing else. And prepare the fire.
00:19:42
Speaker
cook millies that's going to take you whatever number of hours. But I had to accommodate the fact that we had to play. And it was like it probably went out playing because I had to play. So make sure that we take the biggest port that we had at home, traditional port, make the fire outside and cook a samp that would last us at least two to three days so that there's space for us to play. So I would do that. But in summer, it didn't work.
00:20:10
Speaker
Why? Yeah, so the sample developed mold and it goes rancid and but because we had nothing else so I would wash it with warm water and warm it again and put on salt and would eat it but we never got sick somehow we never got sick from eating stale food.
00:20:28
Speaker
we never got sick and there were times when we would go around the village begging like you beg for breakfast, you beg for what you're gonna eat at supper because you couldn't bother the village with all the meals that's what we'll do so you would beg for whatever that you're gonna eat at least two times a day and I recall one day we got mil mil which is maize meal from one family so we're sitting in debate where we're going to find salt.
00:20:54
Speaker
So we took a decision with my father that we're not going to ask for salt because somehow we're thinking that the villagers were getting tired of us. They never said so but we had to feel for the fact that we were relying on the villagers who would start the village right at the top and then go to the bottom of the village.
00:21:11
Speaker
begging for food and at times borrowing uniform so this time we decided that we're not going we're going to eat um the the the meal without salt because we just reckon that people are tired of us begging so decide that okay we're gonna eat the food without salt
00:21:27
Speaker
Because I had this musical inclination which comes from my mother's side, in fact my father's side as well, I still sing in a choir, I sing in a church choir, I sing in this choir, but I started singing in the very early ages junior choir at school. So during times when we were supposed to go to school competitions,
00:21:47
Speaker
I had no shoes, I had no uniform. So I would go to one family to borrow shoes so that I could participate in the competition and then go to another family to borrow a uniform. And I remember one incident when the mother of this peer of mine at school was saying, you are not getting this uniform because my child doesn't sing in a choir. You sing in a choir but you don't have uniform.
00:22:13
Speaker
I don't understand why you even bother to sing with your uniform and therefore your only solution is to get out of the choir so that you don't go around borrowing other people's uniforms and I ended up not participating in the competition as a result of that but that's how life was in the village but largely we got a lot of support from the community
00:22:35
Speaker
And you would have those families that would say, we're not part of this nonsense. And how would you say that level of poverty, resilience, having to just fend for yourself at such a young age, how would you say that shaped your
Empathy in Journalism
00:22:51
Speaker
future life? So post-university and things that you went on to do, how did that shape you? The way it happened, going back to the village and how the village assisted us, it bothers me when I see people who are suffering.
00:23:04
Speaker
it bothers me. And I think that's what informed my journalism as well, my approach to journalism.
00:23:09
Speaker
it bothers me greatly to see people suffering when I have things. So I would rather give whatever that I have or share whatever that I have in instances where I see people experiencing what I experienced at the time, because I'm also a product of other people's generosity. So it makes sense for me to share my stuff with others who are in need. And in fact, last year in June,
00:23:36
Speaker
I had been invited by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. It's part of the Bloomberg Media program, Media Fellows. So I got there, but as I was preparing to go there, bring in mind that I have had 15 months of no salon after my departure from the CBC. And I had lost a lot of money.
00:23:59
Speaker
on legal costs. And I had to make serious adjustments in my whole lifestyle. I had to take back the car that I was driving because I couldn't afford it with no salary. In fact, that 15 months, I also didn't have a car in that 15 months. I was using public transport in Uber to commute to wherever that I needed to go. But as I was preparing to go to Washington, this was my first month. I hadn't gone back to work because I was appointed to May, where I am currently with Becky Scissor.
00:24:28
Speaker
So this is the first salary after not having a salary for a very long time. And in fact, I was starting to fall into areas in most of my responsibilities, including my house. And I had to make sure that with the first salary, I needed to try and stabilize my critters and make sure that I try and cover
00:24:47
Speaker
for the period that I was not able to pay my accounts. So on the morning of my traveling to the U.S., even though we knew that we were going to be getting money from the organizers when we got to the U.S., I only had two slices of bread here. Two slices. That's all I had. And I had tea. So I called my sister that morning because I needed money to get Uber to take me to the airport. And I needed to cut my way. I had to do those things. I called my sister, who's a teacher, in one of the schools in Starm.
00:25:17
Speaker
And in fact, it was the first time that I had to beg my siblings for anything because I've always tried to take care of my staff. So I said to her, here's my situation and I don't know what to do at this point. Can you please assist me? And immediately she sent me the money, but she couldn't put it on the account because my account was in areas. So she had to send it where you want it, like cash sent kind of facility and my phone.
00:25:43
Speaker
And I was able to withdraw the money, went to cut my head knowing that the amount is going to go to the transport to get me to the airport. But I had my tea with my two slices that morning of brown bread. And as I was sitting and having this tea and bread, it took me back to the time when I used to treasure bread, just the smell of bread, even if I wasn't going to have it. I used to treasure it because
00:26:09
Speaker
It used to be a lecture to us at the time I was growing up. But here I was late in my, not late in my life, because I'm still quite active. Very much younger. At this stage of my life, here I find myself with only two slices of bread in the house and tea. But I was smiling as I was having it, but thinking, so life has come full circle. I'm back where I was when I grew up, but in a different circumstance now.
00:26:38
Speaker
so i get to the airport and all i was saying to myself was i've got nothing else now so i paid for uber to get me to the airport and here i am i can't even go to one of the lounges i can't buy myself anything i can't even buy myself water in this environment because i've got nothing all i knew was that once i get super clean
00:26:58
Speaker
I am going to be like everyone else. I will be served food like anyone else. Whoever is sitting next to me won't know my situation. And when I get to the airport, I know exactly what's going to happen because we'll be getting the money that we were supposed to have for subsistence. But here's what happened when I go to the US. So one lady I was travelling with from Cape Town, so gets to pay for Uber from the airport.
00:27:21
Speaker
to the hotel because we're going to reinvest for that. So she got to pay for it. When I got there, it's standard that you need to have a credit card that is money to protect him to one of these hotels. I don't have money. I don't have money. And now I'm scared to ask the lady. Oh gosh.
00:27:36
Speaker
Well, she checks in, she gets allocated a room, she gets a key, she goes. And I'm sitting at that reception, and this woman just told me, I didn't feel like I knew that I was taking a chance. This woman just told me that we can't check you in. And I'm trying to think, if I were to speak to the organizers, how is it going to work? But it was a Sunday. It's like, OK, this thing is not going to work anyway.
00:27:56
Speaker
So I'm going to sit here. I don't know how this thing is going to be sold, but I'm going to sit here. I sat there, so trying to communicate with people in South Africa, but talking about other things, not the fact that I have not been able to check in because I can't pay the deposit. So I'm sitting there because I'm using the hotel Wi-Fi, so I'm able to chat with them.
00:28:14
Speaker
Later, I thought, it's getting dark. What am I going to do? I had asked the lady, the same lady who paid for Uber to get the hotel, if she could loan me money. So I ended, my deposit was cash. My deposit was cash and standard is that you use credit card, but they took whatever that I could give them and that worked. So that's how I actually got to say, you're in the room the same night that I had arrived and I was out of the seat in the bottom lobby.
00:28:41
Speaker
So I've had these tragic moments, but for me, none of those things shocked me because I've been through this.
00:28:47
Speaker
And in fact, I've been through the West in my life.
Struggles at SABC
00:28:50
Speaker
And I think it is a good point for us to kind of go into what happened at SABC, because what you're telling me is such a beautiful story in hindsight, in the sense that the level of resilience you had to build at a young age then came to be very critical at this point. And you said at the beginning of the interview also about how you're a bit of a loner.
00:29:12
Speaker
and not sharing your problems with other people and that actually there are things that have happened. As you shared it, perhaps things would not have happened that way. So it's a very interesting, like you said, full second moment because here you are years into it, what has been a very successful career journey, which we'll have to come back to because I'm really interested for us to maybe talk more about what happened during the SABC period, right? So you are a group executive editor of news and current affairs, right? At SABC, I believe about four years.
00:29:41
Speaker
And then you had this experience of what you called a culture of flouting due process as a broadcaster, right? So you had that experience. And just to give some context, because the question really is about your experience in that time. The allegations were that you were being asked to do an interview with the president and his wife.
00:30:02
Speaker
Which again in terms of editorial standards, were things that you were not going to do. And as a result, there was a case against you that, you know, alleged that you had allowed a particular program around trucking to go on air.
00:30:15
Speaker
but actually it was something much bigger that led to that. So let's go back to the beginning of your experience at SCBC leading up to that point. What was it like for you as a woman of your background and your context to have been at that top position in such an organisation like SCBC? It's quite interesting because yesterday marked six years.
00:30:39
Speaker
of the rebranding of the SABC News Division as a public news service using the impartiality and independence principles as co-editorial pillars of the news division. So when I got to the SABC, it was the first of March 2018. Somehow I went to the new SABC having an idea of what needed to be done. Even before I got there, I had an idea of what needed to be done. The SABC had been in the public domain for all sorts of reasons.
00:31:08
Speaker
but largely they were around editorial issues and editorial control of the S.A.B.C. So I went there knowing exactly what I was subjecting myself to. In fact, I recall at the time people that I was in class with in my MBA studies were saying, what were you thinking in the first place? What made you think that it was okay to join the S.A.B.C.? But for me, it was like, so if I don't go, who else is going to do it in the way that I thought of?
00:31:32
Speaker
Even with the rebranding of the news division, which I did three months after joining the SAPC, I joined in March, 4th June I was rebranding the news division because what I did was to look at what was happening versus what I knew was happening at SAPC from an outsider perspective and looked into the system and I could tell exactly what I thought needed to be done.
00:31:57
Speaker
In fact, I recall an interview that I did on my second day at the ABC. And that's the time I started talking about the independence and impartiality of the news division. And in fact, I look back, I think I was weird at the time because I had not even started communicating that to the news division as something that I was as an approach that I was going with.
00:32:16
Speaker
And I then went to the provinces, the nine provinces, because there were 13 offices at the time across the country and started selling the idea and getting a sense of the health of the offices of the news division at the SAPC and trying to plant the seed as to what needs to happen next.
00:32:35
Speaker
So after doing that, somehow there was resistance even from within in terms of the direction I was taking the newsroom. There was resistance even from within. So it wasn't just a case of people questioning it when they saw it happening. Because there were questions from politicians and other interested people who wanted to know what I meant or what it meant to have an editorial independent newsroom or impartially framed
00:33:04
Speaker
and news gathering processes. And I had to explain myself and on the day of the launch, I actually recall how we had live interviews trying to explain to the public what it meant. But for me, it was a simple thing because the two principles come from the editorial process of the SAPC. So it was not something that I heard from outside. They are there. And in fact, that's orientation of public broadcasting if it's to be done properly. So I didn't see any difficulty in explaining it, but it was difficult for people to internalize the fact that
00:33:33
Speaker
it meant that the control of editorial processes was confined to the newsroom now, not even to the SABC but within the newsroom itself that no one else outside the newsroom had to say in what the newsroom was doing. But it got to a point where everybody got to understand internally and in fact everybody took it on board and it became a way of life within the SABC. But came elections 2019 which was a national election
00:33:59
Speaker
and national and provincial election. I then had to go around the country addressing politicians about the approach that we're taking editorially and how we're going to treat our coverage and how we're going to treat political parties because there was still a sense from the traditionally preferred political parties that including smaller parties in our coverage was a waste of resources.
00:34:22
Speaker
And that's how it was framed that it was a waste of resources. All we needed was to focus on the big parties. And my view was that that's not how multi-party democracy works. And also, if you're going to talk about equity as we know it, it means you need to give space to the smaller ones so that they can communicate their messaging. Otherwise, if you're going to focus on big parties, what that means is that you are maintaining the status quo and you are not supporting multi-party democracy if you are disregarding smaller parties.
00:34:52
Speaker
And in fact, everybody bought into it when I got around the country explaining the approach that we're taking, because even the smaller parties now we're appreciating the fact that they have a voice that the platform they can go to and the space was open for them to actually communicate their messaging. But somehow it was still not going down well, even though I could not pinpoint where the biggest problems were, because at some point I had threats to my life
00:35:20
Speaker
And one time someone tried to force me off the road and I was driving out of the fuel station in my area. I don't know what was happening. All I know is that I had to drive straight to a police station and be escorted by the police to my house. And post that incident, there were several others. But by the time we were going to 2019 elections closer to the period, I was assigned protection services by the CBC.
00:35:46
Speaker
because they had done an assessment which was done by the police and I was assigned protection services. So I couldn't leave my house without protection services and I couldn't come back to my house without being escorted to the house. But that meant that my life was confined to certain spaces because I couldn't go to other spaces without them.
00:36:05
Speaker
So up until post elections in 2019, but there were rumblings even at the time about how we're covering the elections. And one approach was we needed to do what was in the best interest of the country as we saw things. And it was setting the public, taking the messaging to the public and taking the voices of the public and elevating them in our average. So without focusing on the retrenchment process, which had its own drama, because the first fallout was the retrenchment process.
00:36:32
Speaker
It was a certain process that the SAP C because my view was that when I joined the SAP C, we had about 900 to eight journalists in the system, all production staff in the news division sitting across the country and serving the 11 official languages that the SAP C broadcasts in radio, television and digital platforms. And there was already a moratorium on appointments because the SAP C had no money.
00:36:58
Speaker
at the time, so every recruitment was suspended. So we ended up losing more people, as the news division. By the time the retrainment process had to be affected, we were already sitting at around 700. So we had lost more staff than I had found in the system, because even at the time I was joining, more people had already left the system without being replaced.
00:37:19
Speaker
So there were gaps already in the newsroom, but we're trying to make things work with what we had. So my point was, if you have 11 languages that you need to serve, and you have all these platforms that you need to serve, various stations that are language specific that you needed to serve, how was the news division going to cope with that if
00:37:38
Speaker
numbers were going to be cut further when we were struggling already with the stuff that was being replaced. So that was my first fallout. And there was drama that led to me being subjected to all sorts of things by the executive because as I was objecting to the process, it was applied across the system. I still had to comply with whatever decisions that were being made, even though I was still objecting to it.
00:38:05
Speaker
And it came to a point where the news division decided to take a decision and I was called into a meeting and I did invite the CEO in the HR. But even in that period, I basically had to face the staff and no one was providing alternative answers to what the staff was asking.
00:38:20
Speaker
And I just said no, because I knew exactly how the process was mishandled in the first place, in the process of consulting with staff and other things that need to be considered. And I then said to staff, no, it's fine. I'll go back to the executive. And as far as the news division is concerned, I'm not going ahead with the process until I raise the issue again with the executive for further consideration.
00:38:43
Speaker
So I had to follow out because there were threats to suspend me and there were threats to subject me to disciplinary processes. And I still have that correspondence because some WhatsApp messages, in fact, I remember saying, go ahead and do it. And I don't even know why, but I just said, if you think that you can suspend, we go ahead and do it. And then I also had cases where
00:39:02
Speaker
I was being told that I needed to take action against newsroom staff that were part of the meeting that I was called into that ended up being televised live watched by the entire country. So now I was being told to take action against staff. And I said, no, if you think that they had no valid reasons to raise whatever concerns they had, you can go ahead. I'm not going to do it. I wasn't going to do it. And the threat was again, if you don't do it, we'll subject you to a decimal process. And I would just go ahead.
00:39:32
Speaker
Let's see what's going to happen. Go ahead and do it. And they never did it. But then coming to 2021 elections, because that was in 2020, coming to 2021 elections, the relations had started feeling already. And I
00:39:48
Speaker
knew exactly where I stood and I knew that I didn't even have the support of other executives because it did come to that point because no one was talking to me. From that period of rearrangements no one was talking to me, no one would check on me on what was happening even though people knew exactly what I was going through but no one bothered to check on me but it meant nothing to me. It was glaring that no one was asking
00:40:11
Speaker
after seeing what was happening in the newsroom that no one even picked up a call and said, how are you doing? All I knew was that the following day I still needed to go to work and continue with what I needed to do. So in 2021, same approach that we used in 2019.
Elevating Public Voices
00:40:28
Speaker
What I had done when we were rebranding and repositioning the newsroom
00:40:33
Speaker
2019, the country was celebrating 25 years of democracy. So our programming was themed around 25 years of democracy. And we had programs that were dedicated to elections programming. And one of those programs was democracy gauge, which was questioned extensively by politicians about what it meant. Because for me, it was about
00:40:57
Speaker
getting the citizens to talk about their experiences in the 25 years of democracy. That's basically what the program was about. And we're not going to filter their experiences because it was their experiences, not our experiences. So we wanted them to talk about their experiences. And in fact, in the way the stories were told, we would go to a site and get a person to narrate their stories and their experiences without editing any of the stuff that they were talking about.
00:41:24
Speaker
because it was the experiences, fascinating experiences or their lived experiences of what the democracy had been to them. So having done that democracy gauge in 2019 that actually upset politicians, 2021 we carried the same approach that had a service delivery gauge because this was now local government elections and these are about services.
00:41:47
Speaker
So people were to talk about their experiences in how the government had been serving them in terms of delivery of services. That's where the problem started. Okay. So this is a program in federal hall. We had the first episode. Subsequent episodes were determined by the public.
00:42:07
Speaker
because we went to the first area. People spoke about the experiences and they showed us what their living conditions were, what are supplies and all that. As we were finishing the first program, the next group in a different committee would be saying, come to us. We want to show you what's happened here. So that's how it worked. So it was more like cochlear implants with the citizens.
00:42:28
Speaker
And so that's where the problem started. Some of the questions were around why we were targeting these communities and not others, where politicians thought things were working better. And it was like, no, but these are stories of citizens. And it's driven by citizens' experiences. So we go where citizens are asking us to go. And there were others who were even suggesting municipalities that we needed to go to, local government communities where we needed to go to.
00:42:57
Speaker
which they thought were working better and then would be telling a different story about those. But at the end, it was clear where things were going. But where this interview with the president is concerned, we had been asking for an interview with the president. In fact, from the time I joined the CBC, from the time I'd been in 2018,
00:43:19
Speaker
And he had done interviews with two of the broadcasters in the country, private broadcasters, but not with the ACBC. The only interview that we were granted was a radio interview in my very early days, and it was like specific radio stations that were granted that interview. But for TV interviews, we treated it like everyone else, where you would catch the president wherever he was, and then you get to do that interview. But for a one-on-one interview with a public broadcaster, we never had that privilege up until now.
00:43:47
Speaker
Otherwise, interviews that we get, you have to meet other journalists to do the interview with the president, but we never got that opportunity where the president would come to us as he had gone to other broadcasters. So 2021, we tried and tried and tried and tried and gave up. And in fact, not giving up, but we were waiting because the very last confirmation before the incident was for a Thursday interview
00:44:12
Speaker
that was to take place. It was to be conducted by the politics editor at the ABC. And then we got a cancellation because the president had to go elsewhere. There was a protest that he needed to go, a community that he needed to go in address. So we never got that interview. Same week, then we had no confirmation or no development or nothing else that was going to happen post that cancellation.
00:44:34
Speaker
On a Sunday morning, I wake up and get these calls, I think it was around nine in the morning, from the CEO. The president is in Limbopo, one of the provinces, and there are three radio stations of the S.A.B.C. there for different languages. And the president wanted, in fact, he didn't start with these radio stations. He was going to a different, a private radio station, and I was being asked to deploy a team that was going to cover the president at this radio station.
00:45:03
Speaker
And the first thing was, no, we have our own stuff, we have our own radio platforms, and therefore we are not going to cover the president outside our own systems. And in fact, if you have a private station, SAP has commercial radio stations that compete with these private stations. How would I have explained to our own commercial radio stations that we are collaborating with
00:45:23
Speaker
completing radio stations but for me the whole thing didn't make sense and any editor would have taken that decision that there was no way that we were going to take an interview that the president was doing with the private because all we needed to do was set up cameras and let the other people do the interview for us to take the feet and we're not going to do that and the second thing was okay if you're not going to do that can we then have the president come to our radio stations because he was campaigning in the area
00:45:48
Speaker
So one, on a Sunday, we don't have a cutting-edge program at the time the president was going to be on site. We had no news stuff except for radio programming stuff that was there. So now I'm expected to call people who are sitting at home and people who have their own engagements to come and conduct an interview. And these are producers in the first place because editors are sitting joining us back. The regional editor that I had spoken to is the person who said to me,
00:46:12
Speaker
we don't have a current office program at the time the president is going to come and therefore there's no staff here for that purpose. And it's an interview that was not scheduled because all we were doing with politics interviews and leaders of parties, only the politics editor was doing those interviews because we wanted consistency in how the party leaders were treated in terms of the questions that were asked and the tone of the interview so that no one is going to come out and say but I was given that person and not the other person.
00:46:39
Speaker
or I prefer this and not another editor to interview me. So we had one person was interviewing all party leaders. So the president is going to this registration, somebody is going to have to deal with producers that were not even briefed by the editors as to the direction of the interview and the core questions that ended to come up. They had not even spoken to the politics editor. I consulted the politics editor. I called him and said, are you aware of this interview that we are being asked to do in this registration? He said, I'm not aware. And then no one has called me.
00:47:08
Speaker
The other editor was more of a national editor in dealing with news gathering. Also was not of the original editor where these stations are also not was off in a way. So my point was this interview is not going to happen. We don't have stuff. Editors have not had a discussion on how this interview is going to be handled in the first place. Because whenever we did an interview, if it was a TV interview, radio station had to have access to that interview as well. So there was no discussion or preparation of this interview that was going to happen elsewhere.
00:47:36
Speaker
So I then explained and I thought that thing had gone away. I literally thought that it had gone away. Later in the day, I think it was around three noon, another board chair calls me and I said, no, I had explained to the CEO that this interview is not going to happen. And I was told that the president was on his way to the radio station, one of the radio stations and preparation for this interview.
00:47:59
Speaker
I said, one, we don't have stuff. And as I've said to you, this interview has not been discussed by editors. And therefore no one knows about this interview in the newsroom. The question that was asked was, what do we tell the president? What do we say to him? And I said, not tell the president that the interview is not happening because we don't have any interview with the president. Just tell him that. It's that simple. We don't have any interview with the president. We are not prepared for it. No one knows, no editor knows about this interview.
00:48:26
Speaker
And therefore I'm not going to okay an interview that I know editors know nothing about, because I also have to protect the authority of editors. I can't overrule the editor. Exactly. And the integrity of the organization. True. So the whole thing subsided, but I realize looking backwards that that was the end for our communication. That's why the communication ended. And in preparation for elections, usually because elections were the following week.
00:48:51
Speaker
Usually I would be asked about the state of readiness, what's in place, what's not in place and at times board members would want to go and see how the setup looks like as they did in 2019. This time around it didn't happen and no one was bothered about whether or not and no questions were being asked not even by the CEO. So that's when I started picking up signals.
00:49:12
Speaker
Then out of the blue an episode that was put on ice beginning September shows up on air in October. It shows up on air and it was a weekly program, a special assignment. So it played weekly and every week the team would say here is the episode that's going to play and that's it.
00:49:32
Speaker
There was a record of that being said. Here's the episode that's going to play. At no point was the interdicted episode meant to go to air. At no point since the time it was on ice. But it showed up on the date. About six episodes later, it showed up. And I had no idea what had happened. The team had no idea what had happened because they were clear about what was to play on that day.
00:49:56
Speaker
And then I was asked to give a report because it was the same week of elections. So I met the results center when I was asked to write a report about what happened, what had transpired. But at that time, somehow with all things that I have to do with interdicts and all legal matters that involve the division, they are handled by the news division. So we would ask for legal advice from the legal division. But this time around, none of that information was coming to the news division. It was handled in the office of the CEO. Wow, okay.
00:50:24
Speaker
Whatever I needed to respond to, whether it was the lawyers themselves, it was handled in the essay, which was unusual. But at the end, I ended up being judged for authorizing the episode.
00:50:38
Speaker
go to A, something that I never did. Because everybody knew, the team knew, that episode was interdicted. No one gave an instruction for that episode to go to A. What aired on that day is not what was provided. There was a show that was provided with a name and the title and everything that was to play on that day, but somehow this thing showed up.
00:50:57
Speaker
So that's how the whole thing started with the dismount process. I had to go through, but for me, it was like, I am not going to live this thing. It's not just about clearing my name. There's also a team behind me, the special assignment team, that's also wondering about how this thing happened. So I had to make sure that I also deal with that aspect of the case. But at the end, how it was settled at the CCMA, which is the constellation and mediation, arbitration,
00:51:23
Speaker
commission. It was clear that the case was not going to go anywhere but at the end it was settled. Yeah I can imagine. I mean you've said a lot there and firstly part of the conversations we have in a lot of African countries around how to view public service broadcasters right and what the role of them are in the society in the democratic environment and then this attempt at stifling that kind of press freedom as you've described it. But for you my question to you was at the beginning you said how you went in with a vision
00:51:52
Speaker
and the various times in your time at SBC where you try to implement a vision. When you reflect on everything, all your time at SBC, anything before, what has been your approach in getting people on board with your vision and taking people along? My approach has been, and in fact I recall two editors who would say, whenever she speaks, when we're in meetings, they would take notes and they say, she thinks on her fridge, okay, we'll take notes and they will come back and have a discussion
Leadership at SABC
00:52:18
Speaker
with her. And I would get to know this.
00:52:21
Speaker
So for me, it's always been about, I think about things and I see them in my head, but I always try and get people to do what I have thought about. Because at times, by the time things get done, I've moved on. I'm no longer interested in that because I think
00:52:41
Speaker
and that people will be able to implement it. So I always make sure that I bring people on board immediately because I know I'm going to get bored if I stick to this one thing until it finishes. Even though my approach is very oriented towards, I'm detail oriented.
00:52:57
Speaker
very detail oriented. I know it's a contrast when I say I get bored easily but when I decide to focus I can be boring when it comes to detail. So I would sit with the teams and I would say these are the things that I think we need to do but then I would give them space to translate them into reality and this is how people got excited about the things that I would think about and I would say if we sit in an eternal meeting
00:53:22
Speaker
There's a bridge that's being opened, which is usually the case with government projects. And I would say the bridge that's going to be open today, it's not an SA business door. That's a government project. What is an SA business story out of that project? And this is how our editorial meetings became vibrant because
00:53:39
Speaker
It forced people to think outside events. And we would say there have been floods in this area or there's been killings in this area. The premier of that province is visiting a family that's been affected. And the question would be, the premier is doing his job going to that family. What is this story? What is the public service story that the SAP is going to tell? And it forced people to think. So the newsroom came to understand how I would
00:54:08
Speaker
think about things and how they needed to translate that into what became the editorial ethos of the newsroom as in how do we tell the stories in a manner that the public understands what we represent and what we are there to do as APC news. So I always made a point, in fact my going around the country when I started was exactly that to try and get a sense of where the newsroom was
00:54:33
Speaker
while at the same time I was starting to communicate what I thought was the vision for the news division, and everybody got excited. And in fact, the weekend before the rebranding, because the rebranding was on the 4th of June, which was a Monday, the Saturday before that, I had invited all the regional editors to Johannesburg, from all the provinces to come to Johannesburg, and we sat and I explained, because that was the final explanation to everyone,
00:54:59
Speaker
I explained to them how the reprinting was going to work and what it meant to achieve, because it wasn't just about the colors and the aesthetics of the brand. It was what we're trying to achieve with all of that substantive. Then what I did was to say, because all the radio stations that are sitting in the different provinces are language oriented,
00:55:19
Speaker
So one province is going to have its talks, and the other province has its zulu, and the other province has its zutu. Then the radio stations carry those languages. I then asked all the original editors that because I was going to do an interview on the morning of the launch, communicating the process to the public, it was a joint TV and radio interview.
00:55:40
Speaker
All the regional editors had the responsibility to communicate to their provinces, provincial audiences, in the languages of the radio stations. So if your radio station in your province was in Africans, you were supposed to communicate in Africans what their rebranding was. So they needed to understand, which is why I brought them to Auckland Park, so that they got a sense of what exactly we're trying to achieve.
00:56:04
Speaker
So everybody had to own the rebranding of the news division. And it only came beyond owning it. This is what I understand this thing to
Standing Up to Bullying
00:56:12
Speaker
mean. Yeah. And when you think about all of the things that subsequently happened that led to your departure and what you've described there, it sounds a lot like, you know, some form of bullying and having to stand up for yourself and having to really push that vision. And also very importantly, you said something there earlier on about how you were also thinking about the people behind you, right, who were looking up to you.
00:56:32
Speaker
to make sure that you take that stance as well. So you've clearly encountered moments of instability, doubt, uncertainty, right, of having to be brave even at times when you probably don't want to be brave. And I think some of that also resonates some of your history growing up as well and the stories you shared around there. So when you think about all of that and think about what you did through those processes, how would you sum that up? How do you become brave in such a moment and stand with your guns? I suppose it's a very
00:57:02
Speaker
I can explain it. I have something that I've observed lately and it was during the 2021 process with SABC. Whenever I get shocked or there's something that excites me that has happened, immediately I hear the news. I want to sleep. It's something I don't know where it comes from and I don't know what it means but somehow all I want is to sleep.
00:57:28
Speaker
And at times I would be driving from wherever or to wherever and something hits me and that's either going to shock me or excite me. Immediately I want to sleep. I don't know how my system works. In fact, I recall the day I received the letter of dismissal.
00:57:45
Speaker
So the letter of dismissal lends it four on my laptop and by five o'clock I was gone. I woke up the following day and that was very much unlike me because my sleep is only five hours. It doesn't matter what time I sleep. Five hours, two o'clock goes off and I wake up. But that day I went to bed and I was gone until the following day and I had this
00:58:08
Speaker
a lot of messages. I had calls, I had calls from home, I had calls from colleagues and from all sorts of people who wanted to know how I was doing and what I was going through and wanted to talk to me and the following day I woke up and I had this clarity of mind and kindness that I didn't know where it came from and all I wanted to know was what's going to be my next step.
00:58:28
Speaker
That's all I was worried about because I had no confusion about the fact that I was dismissed. In fact, I had no misery about the fact that I found myself in that position. All I was thinking about was, what's going to be my next step? And my next step was to call my eyes and say, I'm going to find this thing and we need to get on it. So I've always had this thing and I didn't realize until it happened at key moments like that dismissal that, okay, I have this thing that every time something hits me, I want to sleep. And when I wake up, I have
00:58:56
Speaker
an incredible amount of mind that I don't know where it comes from. But at that moment, I know exactly what I need to do afterwards. So I've always had that. And I think I also have a calmness that I don't know where it comes from. Because at times, I get frustrated with myself when I'm supposed to be fighting for things. And somehow, my body just refuses, and my mind refuses to fight. But what I have to fight for, I know exactly where that image is going to come from.
00:59:25
Speaker
And I know where that courage is going to come from, because it's not a case of, I'm going to sit and plan that I'm going to do this. It's usually a case of, I know this thing needs to be done. I don't know where it's going to come from, but I've got to go through this. When people were asking me about why I was not doing an interview on what I've gone through with the, in fact, this is my first interview, basically.
00:59:44
Speaker
very first interview. I'm so honored. At the time I was going through the case, I had a list of media houses that I wanted to talk to me and people who were on a podcast wanted to talk to me. And I would say I'll think about it later, but I don't want to talk because one of the things I didn't want to be distracted. And one thing that I've learned is a tactic. If you don't share what you're going to do, no one can predict your next move. That's what I've learned. No one can predict your next move. And I know that every time the SABC
01:00:13
Speaker
thought about what I was going to do. They had no idea what I was going to do. And in fact, they had no idea that I was going to end up on the board in the first place. But no one knew what then was. No one knew. So I'm the only person who knew what my next step was going to be. So I knew that if I expose myself to the media, in fact, I'm going to find myself talking about things that I am not ready to talk about. And I also didn't want to speak out of anger. I wanted to make sure that I was sober enough. I collected your thoughts, yeah.
01:00:42
Speaker
And in fact, some people were even saying, so when are you going to write a book? I'm not going to write a book now. I know when that time comes, I'll be ready to write that book because I don't want to write out of anger. I don't want to write out of emotion. I want to be sober when I write that book because I don't want it to be a book of wounds. I want to be able to say to the other person.
01:01:02
Speaker
Maybe there's something to learn out of my experience. So I don't want to write off wounds. I don't want to write while I'm bleeding. Yeah. And talking about Full Circle, you are now on the board of directors of the SABC, right? So when you think about all of the things that you've talked about today that you shared, what are the things you're taking with you?
01:01:21
Speaker
What are the things that you're hoping to achieve on the board, considering all your experiences?
Governance and Accountability
01:01:26
Speaker
I think there was an article recently on the Sunday Times, about two Sundays, three Sundays back. The article was board reactions at the CBC, and it had to do with ANC study group sessions where the chairman of the board and the CEO and some other people would be invited to go and attend.
01:01:46
Speaker
ahead of parliamentary reports being tabled by the CPC. And it is correct that I had concerns. It is correct. And concerns around governance, because in the governance framework of the CPC, there's no structure called the insisted group that the CPC is supposed to report to. And these are not engagements with political parties where a party says we have concerns, or we want to meet the CPC as a stakeholder.
01:02:14
Speaker
And usually those meetings would take place at the SAPC because the parties would have asked that we want to meet with SAPC either executives or board or a combination. These meetings, it's a few people who get to attend them and they've got nothing to do with the expression of concerns on matters of how the SAPC conducts itself. It's about
01:02:36
Speaker
what is to be presented to parliament that gets shared with the party. So my thing has been, one, I got to know this by accident because this is not information that was made available to us before. So when I did ask
01:02:54
Speaker
It turned out in the responses that I got, it turned out that it's something that has been happening since the board was appointed and the board has not been aware of it and the board was not informed of any of those invitations. And that's where my question started. So how is it that the board is not aware of engagements with a political pattern?
01:03:13
Speaker
that is not even part of the reporting system of the SAP C. Because this is not a random or a set meeting that SAP C is being invited to. And in fact, we never get invited to meetings. It's parties that want to meet with SAP C. So they come to us and we address whatever that means to address. But these are regular meetings whenever SAP C++ is required.
01:03:35
Speaker
So you basically go and brief the party about the content of your documents, even though it's been framed differently, but that's exactly what happens. So for me, I wasn't going to keep quiet because one, it's a governance issue, and two, I won't sit on a board that behaves in a manner that falls outside of the governance framework of the CPC that I'm not going to do. I'm not going to do it now, and I'm not going to do it in the future.
01:03:59
Speaker
So those things are important to me. And also, because I understand the system, and I also understand the political interests, so it's easy for me to pick up things and raise them. And in fact, the whole thing about courage, I've learned that courage is not something that you wake up with. You start with one incident and you go to the next. So I'm at a level where I think I've built enough idiosyncrasy capital to be able to deal with anyone.
01:04:28
Speaker
without having to fight, but just say, I disagree with this, or I don't think this thing should be done this way. I don't care who you are. If I disagree with something, I'm going to explain to you thoroughly why I think it shouldn't be done. And if you are able to persuade me, I'll listen still. I'll listen. So that's been my experience on the board. And we have a young board, generally, we have a young board. So we all have strong views actually on that board. We have strong views.
01:04:55
Speaker
But anything that goes against governance, because I've made it my business to understand how the CPC works. So it's an area where I will make sure that we don't fail. Absolutely. And so I normally end this interview with a question of what next. But I'm going to honor what you said earlier on that you don't reveal your what next to people. So that's not going to be my last question. Right. Because it is important that we honor that. So what I'm going to say to you is that your story is beyond inspirational.
01:05:23
Speaker
from the growing up, from the level of poverty you experienced so young, from having to cater for yourself through university in the way that you had to, from the very public experiences that you had at the SABC. So now going full circle to come back and say, okay, that issue that I had, that environment that wasn't working, I'm here to now use my experience to fix that environment. So to our listeners listening who are either at what stage of their career, what is the one resounding advice?
01:05:53
Speaker
you want to give based on your experience to guide that journey. Trust to intuition. That has been my biggest thing and what I've learned even though the whole thing of not having people that I would call friends who are close to me. I think where it has helped, I've got a lot of time to talk to myself and I do. I've got a lot of time to interrogate my own thoughts and I think I understand myself better
01:06:21
Speaker
Because there are things that I know this thing is going to trigger me and I must stay away from it. And at times I would say this thing is going to trigger me. I'm going to push for it. I want to see where it's going to end. So I've come to understand myself at that level. I trust my intuition when something says don't go that route or go that route. I listen to that.
01:06:42
Speaker
but I think the fact that I've been able to be in my own space and be in my own mind and understand my thought patterns because I can tell you I know when I go off the rails in my thinking and I know myself. I've got to know myself at that level. I know when I'm going off the rails and I'll be sitting in a discussion and I would smile at myself because I've just thought about something and I know that it's wrong.
01:07:06
Speaker
So I'm able to quieten myself. I'm able to quieten my mind and say, no, I need to listen more. But with the level of noise that's around us, it's difficult. It is difficult at those moments, but I've come to appreciate
01:07:24
Speaker
why I need them. So I make time for myself, I make time to think, and I don't think we make enough time to think, and we need more of it. Thank you so much, Fatiz Vamagopani. It has been more than an honor to speak with you and to interact with you today. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us. Thank you, thank you very much. It has been such a great pleasure listening to Fatiz Vamagopani share her story
01:07:51
Speaker
And one that is a clear depiction of the power of resilience, self-reliance, and the importance of trusting your intuition amidst chaos and uncertainty. I hope you found Fattis' story as inspiring as I have, and it is said to be an honor to have her speak to us on her experiences through those triumph years at the SCBC for the first time.
01:08:17
Speaker
Send me an email at emc at AfricanWomenInMedia.com with your thoughts on reflections on Hook for T's worst story. If you'd like to join me in finding an episode on this podcast, let me know. To find out more about African Women in Media and our work, visit our main website at AfricanWomenInMedia.com. And in the show notes, there's a list of organizations and resources to support you if you have experienced any of the topics we've discussed today. And don't forget, join the conversation using the hashtag EmmediaDiary.
01:08:49
Speaker
Hemi The Diary is a product of African women in media, an NGO advocating for gender equality in the media industry. And this episode, was hosted by Dr. Yemi Sayake Mbopola, produced and edited by Blessin Udewasi as part of a four-episode series on media legends. All music featured in this podcast is by Nana Khabena. Thanks for listening and join us again next time.