Table of contents for Issue 303 2022 in The Big Issue

The Big Issue is 25 years’ strong, a print publication that has seen all the ups and downs in the media industry, stood steadfast during the digital revolution, and has survived the knocks that have toppled corporate giants after the pandemic and resulting economic disaster. Our survival is, in part, due to the fact that we are first and foremost an NGO, with a contingent of street vendors who sell the magazine through their personal entrepreneurial efforts to make a living for themselves and their families. Our vendors are our heroes. We remain independent, giving expression to those who have a lesser and sometimes no voice at all. Our aim is to deliver unbiased, factual and entertaining content amid the challenges. In these trying times we tread against the tide…

Speaking about her book, The Whistleblowers, in an interview with Pan Macmillan, Mandy says that the idea originated from an interview with a whistleblower for a book she wanted to write which never materialised. “It made me really consider what happens to whistleblowers in South Africa and their plight … the value that we don’t give to whistleblowers, and I just thought that it was so important to shine a light on the issue in South Africa.” Instead of writing a book about one whistleblower she set about meeting with them, listening to their stories and asking them to be interviewed. The result is a cross-section of people in South Africa, those who have chosen to speak truth to power, risking everything in the interests of truth and of justice…

APPEARED ORIGINALLY ON THE MEDIA ONLINE IN MARCH 2021. ABOUT JOHN John Perlman is a radio presenter for 702, where he hosts The John Perlman Show, a weekday programme between 3pm and 6pm. Perlman previously hosted Today with John Perlman on Kaya FM, and co-hosted AM Live and the After 8 Debate on the SAfm radio station on SABC. Perlman is the founder and CEO of The Dreamfields Project, an NGO which provides football and netball equipment, coaching and league programmes for primary school children in South Africa’s townships and rural areas. He has a BA in History, African Politics and Southern Sotho, and a BA Honours in Development Studies. I have used “I don’t know the answer to that,” when discussing the pros and cons of restrictions on alcohol.…

Ready to read? HAVE FUN ALL THE WAY Enjoy your free sample of the little issue magazine Multilingual content based on the Department of Basic Education CAPS syllabus Buy YOUR copy of little issue at select Spar and Pick n Pay stores NATIONWIDE excluding the greater metros of Cape Town Pick n Pay Stories • Activities • Recipes • Jokes • Riddles • Competitions How to safely cross the road Ungayiwela njani indlela ngokukhuselekileyo HELP HARRY CROSS THE ROAD. WHAT SHOULD HE DO FIRST? Put the pictures in the right order. Label them from numbers 1 to 4. NCEDA UHARRY AWELE INDLELA. YINTONI EMAKAYENZE KUQALA? BEKA imifanekiso ngendlela eyiyo. Yinombole ukusuka ku1 ukuya ku4. GO. Cross the road. HAMBA. Wela indlela. Look right again. Jonga ngasekunene kwakhona. Look left. Jonga…

Nando’s has partnered with Bridges For Music Academy, a non-profit organisation and academy that taps into the power of music to uplift, encourage, and strengthen disadvantaged communities across the world. Bridges for Music’s mission is to make a positive impact on South Africa’s music industry and help to generate an employable and entrepreneurial pipeline of music experts working in different music-related fields from sound engineering and production through to music-makers. As South Africa’s home of Peri-Peri chicken and spicy ‘quips,’ Nando’s is committed to nurturing and growing South Africa’s young creative talent. Through this commitment, Nando’s aims to ensure, young creative people have a space to create work to share with the nation and the world. While music and sound are a strong part of the curriculum, the students also…

Prudence Demas Proud of South Africa’s smart black women. Our children must be told about our proud heritage. Dave Thomas So pleased you guys are still making a BiG difference. Penny Nozukile Mdingi Beautiful attractive cover. Julia Smuts Halala! Always a great buy Shona Randall Salver If The Big Issue is sold at Spar and P&P doesn’t that take business from the street vendors? Do those sales also assist people in need? Ed’s response: Good question. The Big Issue is sold by street vendors in the Cape Town area only, but is supplied nationally via Spar and Pick n Pay Stores. YOUR VOICE IS IMPORTANT TO US Join the conversation on our Facebook and Twitter pages. Email comments to laura.jones@mikatekomedia.co.za facebook.com/bigissuesa @BigIssueSA WHERE TO FIND THE BIG ISSUE The Big…

LECTURER AT WITS. PUBLISHED ORIGINALLY ON WWW.THECONVERSATION.COM WHO IS DAMON GALGUT? Damon Galgut is a South African writer born in Pretoria in 1963. He now lives and works in Cape Town. He made his literary debut at the age of 18, with the publication of his first novel, A Sinless Season, in 1982. The Promise is his ninth novel, and the third to be shortlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize. Although best known for his novels, Galgut has also authored several plays, screenplays and short stories.…

STATION MANAGER, CAPETALK 567AM ABOUT TESSA During her studies at Stellenbosch University, Tessa managed the local campus radio station and then moved to Johannesburg where she joined SAFM as a producer. She left South Africa for New York to complete a postgraduate degree at Columbia University. Upon her return to Southern Africa, she freelanced for Voice of America, and then relocated to Cape Town. Remember December 2019? Global news channels were broadcasting images of rapidly rising hospitals in parts of China amid the spread of a new virus. I vividly remember watching those stories and hearing hosts on CapeTalk reflecting what they were seeing on television screens without realising, at the time, that the same virus was about to wreak havoc by impacting all aspects of our lives. When I…

ABOUT ZUBEIDA Zubeida Jaffer is an award-winning South African journalist, author and activist. She started her career at the Cape Times in 1980 and also spent a short stint at the Rand Daily Mail in Johannesburg in the same year. Her work has earned her numerous local and international awards. These include the Muslim Views Achiever Award and the Honor Medal for Distinguished Service to Journalism from the University of Missouri in the USA. She helped with developing local community newspapers such as Grassroots during the time of resistance to apartheid. Her stories have appeared in newspapers across Africa and more broadly in countries such as Japan, India, the U.K and North America. She was the founding editor of Independent Newspapers parliamentary bureau serving 14 newspapers across South Africa. She…

Operations Director and Founding Member of the Bridges Academy, Thulani Headman aka Fosta, says, “Music can change someone’s life, I’m a perfect example of this. As much as most of our co-creators [ students ] are looking at learning music skills at the academy, they receive more than they expect. Music is just a driver to tap into one’s innate potential and find new routes in life. Our goal is to prepare them for the gig economy, so they can become self-sustainable artists or find new ways of generating an income in the creative industries. We aim for each student to leave with a new mindset and toolkit to be ready for the real world. Working with Nando’s has enabled us to not only give these life-changing opportunities to the…

Fish Hoek, Cape Town Who: Zuko Pholo, vendor number: 1930 Joined The Big Issue: in 2013. Been selling the magazine for nine years Pitch: Long Beach Road, Fish Hoek Resides in: Phillipi. Ideal job: Driver Hopes and dreams: To get a code 14 driver’s license. To advance his studies. Zuko has a matric certificate and completed a First Aid level 1 course. He is appealing to his customers for sponsorship to advance his future studies. He would like to eventually do a paramedics course. Who: Sive Mondile, vendor number: 1917 Joined The Big Issue: in 2014. Been selling the magazine for eight years Pitch: Long beach road near the Long beach mall, Fish Hoek. Resides in: Philippi Ideal job: Truck driver. Sive has a code 14 driver’s license. Hopes and…

South African writer Damon Galgut has won the UK’s most prestigious literary award, the Booker Prize, for his work The Promise. It was Galgut’s third shortlisting for the career-defining award, which has evaded him until now. In 2003 he was shortlisted for The Good Doctor and in 2010 for In a Strange Room. So what is it that makes his latest novel The Promise so special? We asked Galgut expert Sofia Kostelac to fill us in about the writer and his tale of a white South African family’s reckoning with a racist past – and why the book is important, especially in South Africa where it is set. Warning: This article contains spoilers. Like many readers, I was first made aware of Galgut’s writing when The Good Doctor was shortlisted…

ABOUT WENDYL Wendyl Martin is a freelance copywriter and content editor working for local and foreign clients. After many years at a Cape Town newspaper, he is enjoying writing about a wide-range of topics for UCT. In his spare time he enjoys karaoke, going to live music, cake and wine. Minimising harm while doing the job of telling stories was a continual conundrum for me in newspaper publishing and while managing a news desk and a team of reporters. Harm comes in different forms: there are the effects of information and published stories, there’s the safety and well-being of the workers you lead and there’s your own well-being and mental health. I’m currently detoxing from almost 13 years of full-time media work; I’m freelancing while soaking up this pause and…

When the clock struck midnight on January 01, 2021 and the world approached the new year with a sense of caution and cautious optimism, so too did the media fraternity. And as the Covid-19 pandemic continued to dominate global news headlines, journalists like myself prepared for yet another year of reporting on the most unprecedented news story of this generation – something which has manifested into the best of times and the worst of times for our profession. As an investigative journalist, my role is to interrogate facts with methodical precision and to ensure there’s accountability when truths are uncovered and exposed. Yet despite all the textbooks I’d studied at university, the countless hours of reporting in the field and my years of journalism experience, nothing could have prepared me…

PUBLISHED ORIGINALLY ON WWW.THECONVERSATION.COM WHAT PROMPTED YOU TO WRITE THE BOOK? For one thing, it is a great story to tell, complete with all the ingredients of a thriller: brothels, spies, brown envelopes and honeypots, all laced with intrigue, deceit and backstabbing. My interest, though, came from a concern that our community of journalists was not dealing properly with the series of journalistic fiascos at the Sunday Times, the country’s biggest and most powerful newspaper. I was on a panel commissioned to conduct an internal investigation at the paper in 2007, after a similar series of journalistic disasters. Our far-reaching recommendations were not implemented. And so, perhaps inevitably, the paper went off the rails again in 2011 – 2016 with another series of stories that boosted those trying to capture…