A mess of misogynoir, revolutionary thinking and mid podcast therapy sessions with Lebo Mashile (Part I)

00:00:01: For we

00:00:02: indigenous people, black and brown people, the apocalypse has happened.

00:00:06: We've been through slavery, genocide, colonialism, dispossession, poverty.

00:00:12: We've been through the dislocation of our family's mass rape.

00:00:17: We've had our lives, our cosmology, our identity formation, the very foundations of who we are ripped apart and turned upside down.

00:00:28: That happened to us.

00:00:33: What the actual... What's good,

00:00:40: my people?

00:00:41: If you do not know by now, I am Tiffany Kaguremuga, a dream to some and a nightmare to others.

00:00:46: Welcome to What Is This?

00:00:48: Hot Mess, a podcast that chills with fire feminists from across the globe to have conversations about the fact that the world is kind of hot trash right now.

00:00:58: It's all about diving into the fact that this kind of feels like the end times.

00:01:02: And in the same breath, looking at the feminists who are helping us, keep the garbage at bay.

00:01:08: They do this by telling the world to pick its fascism off the floor and put away its hate, violence, and general nonsense.

00:01:15: Basically telling it to clean up its act.

00:01:18: In this episode, we have the magnificent, the unshakable, the absolute legend, the unborable, Lebo Machile.

00:01:26: Lock in because we are about to capital B Bio.

00:01:29: Label Masheela is a genre-defying multi-hyphenate force.

00:01:34: She is a South African poet, playwright, recording artist, performer... and cultural producer whose work has redefined the boundaries of art, activism, and African storytelling over the past twenty-five years.

00:01:48: She conjures poetry that is Ecopart's spells, song, and strategy.

00:01:53: Her debut poetry collection, In a Rainbow of Rhythm, won the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa, and her groundbreaking play, Venus vs.

00:02:02: Modernity, is a sonic and theatrical exploration of Sarah Buttman's legacy.

00:02:08: play toward internationally and is being adapted for print and soundtrack release.

00:02:13: And she's not just confined to the stage because she has scripted and produced and presented award-winning television shows such as Latitude and Great Expectations and has worked with major brands like Netflix and MTN and Castle Milkstart, for those of you who love a good beer.

00:02:31: This magical being is a committed mother, spiritual seeker and wellness advocate and embodies a multi-dimensional black womanhood that is as fierce as it is soft.

00:02:43: I could spend the rest of the podcast listing the accolades and achievements, but let me pause here.

00:02:48: This one is a Titan.

00:02:51: A little top of the pod PSA.

00:02:53: This episode epitomizes what this podcast is all about.

00:02:58: A hot mess of a conversation about a hot mess of a situation.

00:03:02: Chaotic Everything is a good description.

00:03:05: But just so you know, it takes us through Lebel's journey to becoming an artistic legend.

00:03:09: How black women go through it.

00:03:12: personally and professionally, as well as the complexity of being a feminist and how you really should be kind to yourself.

00:03:20: And also a bunch of random ad libs.

00:03:22: So a warning, this podcast is exactly what it needed to be and it will not be tamed.

00:03:28: Also,

00:03:29: Lebo and I had us a good time.

00:03:31: Welcome to the Fun House.

00:03:40: These are the side things that we need.

00:03:44: These are the side things.

00:03:47: Love it.

00:03:48: Hi.

00:03:48: Also, look at this.

00:03:51: Look at us.

00:03:52: Look at us sitting

00:03:53: and talking to you.

00:03:54: Oh my gosh.

00:03:54: After how many years, after how many years of mutual admiration society.

00:03:58: So many years.

00:03:59: On Twitter.

00:03:59: So many

00:04:00: years.

00:04:00: At least a decade

00:04:01: more.

00:04:01: It is at least a decade.

00:04:03: At least a decade.

00:04:04: And I even remember the day I got your email address.

00:04:06: I don't even remember what it was for.

00:04:08: I even remember when you were, I started following when you were, you were still at UCT I think.

00:04:12: From back in the day.

00:04:13: From back in the day.

00:04:14: I think that's when I started interacting with you.

00:04:16: Go to Ita.

00:04:17: Oh my God.

00:04:18: From

00:04:18: that time.

00:04:19: From all those days.

00:04:20: Oh my God.

00:04:20: Okay, great.

00:04:23: We must start.

00:04:27: Told you all of the things happening in this episode.

00:04:30: And now that you have a taste of what is to come, let us jump straight into our beloved first segment, the feminist origin story.

00:04:38: It's the part where we hear all about how people became card-carrying feminists.

00:04:43: Level story is one that resonates around the world.

00:04:47: She got it from her mama.

00:04:49: And are you even a black or brown person if you don't have at least one story about a grandmother or a great grandmother or a mother who shaped the way we saw things in the most powerful and subtle of ways, who strongly and often silently held it down, who managed a multi-generational family with the precision of a coach of a Premier League team?

00:05:13: No.

00:05:13: No, you are not.

00:05:15: Whether you believe that historically societies were matriarchs or not, side note, I would not recommend going down like Reddit rabbit holes about this.

00:05:24: The fellas are big mad about this idea.

00:05:27: Anyway,

00:05:28: whether you believe it or not, you cannot deny the role of older women in shaping and upbringing of the next generation.

00:05:35: Like orcas and elephants, humans have older females who keep the bloodline on track in a myriad of ways.

00:05:43: So many of us have the story of how we had an incredible woman running things and being the reason our family is allowed into polite society.

00:05:52: I myself have the most magical mom who is the heartbeat of our family and took over from a grandmother who was the most awesome powerhouse.

00:06:02: I once had a pastor try and tell me and my female cousins that the only boy in our generation was going to be the future head of the family.

00:06:10: We looked at him like, are you lost?

00:06:13: Do you even know how this particular lineage works?

00:06:16: Get

00:06:17: the hell up outta here.

00:06:19: Also, he ended up being a bit of a sketchy misogynist, so we should probably take his word with a pinch of salt.

00:06:25: The story of a strong woman rings true for Lebo, who found her feminism from the women in the family, who consciously and unconsciously lit the fire inside her.

00:06:35: What is your feminist origin story?

00:06:37: How did it all

00:06:37: start?

00:06:38: Oh my gosh, I was thinking about that this morning.

00:06:42: Probably family.

00:06:46: There's such a spectrum of... experiences that I can kind of situate myself within when I look at the women in my family.

00:06:56: If I think about my grandmothers and my mom, my mom called herself a feminist.

00:07:02: So I didn't have to find feminism out there.

00:07:05: My mother described herself as a feminist.

00:07:07: What?

00:07:08: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:07:08: And this was when?

00:07:09: And this was in the eighties, nineties.

00:07:14: She was black conscious.

00:07:15: She was a feminist.

00:07:17: She was a child of seven.

00:07:19: So she was the one who was an activist.

00:07:23: My mom was always, when I was growing up, she was always working and studying and doing her activism in those days of the anti-apartheid struggle.

00:07:34: We lived in Providence, Rhode Island, so she was involved in an organization called Rhode Island Divest, getting universities and businesses and the state of Rhode Island to divest from their interests in South Africa.

00:07:47: So she was, I grew up in the backseat of her car, watching her run around and do fifty million things.

00:07:52: That's why I do this, you know?

00:07:54: My grandmother was, her mom was a nurse, a matron, and a midwife.

00:07:59: On the other side of my family, my grandmother was, she had a very different experience.

00:08:06: She wasn't educated, married a man who was a businessman and a boxer, had the foresight before group areas to realize that people were going to be relocated from.

00:08:16: what was then western native townships of fire town to Soweto.

00:08:20: So my grandfather built a shop in Soweto.

00:08:22: My grandmother ran the shop and raised kids, but he beat her mercilessly.

00:08:27: So I got to see what the experiences of women are based on.

00:08:33: kind of what choices do you have based on your level of education, based on your level of dependency on a man?

00:08:42: I also got to see that no matter how educated you are or how empowered you are publicly, it's difficult for African women to escape misogyny in the home.

00:08:53: in patriarchal relationships, in relationships with men, right?

00:08:57: So the same women that I saw who were so empowered in the world and empowering other people in the world, I also saw them take on African patriarchy as a force that broke them down in the house.

00:09:13: So I mean, my experience is very different.

00:09:16: It's not different.

00:09:17: Sorry, my experience is very similar to the experiences of millions of people who come from this corner of the earth.

00:09:22: So, I mean, from my childhood, I was exposed to sexual abuse, patriarchy, misogyny, you know, physical abuse, you know, the usual cooking agents that you

00:09:34: meet in there.

00:09:34: The

00:09:34: full,

00:09:35: like... Yeah, the full, the buffet.

00:09:36: Yeah,

00:09:37: the whole

00:09:38: buffet.

00:09:39: The buffet.

00:09:40: So,

00:09:40: realizing

00:09:41: that that buffet also, it exists even for women who have choice and agency and power, you know?

00:09:53: That was a real eye opener for me, you know, to see that you're not... you don't get spared, you know?

00:10:02: And then it became, I think, a personal tool for me when my own kind of identity formation happened when we moved back to South Africa when I was a teenager, discovering my own creative voice later at university, figuring out that I want to be an artist, then... All these kind of political principles that were in the environment that I grew up in became a part of my own practice and have remained a part of my own practice.

00:10:29: So it's like first principles for me, deconstructing everything, the shit that happens to me, what is happening in the world, my work, everything.

00:10:38: I go back to feminism, back to black consciousness, back to pan-Africanism, back to indigenous spirituality as well.

00:10:49: And I feel like we're really lucky to have these tools.

00:10:54: And I mean, there's so many, right?

00:10:56: There's the Marxism, liberation theory, all the stuff, right?

00:10:59: I think, especially in this moment in history, these are real tools of survival.

00:11:04: This is what we need to be using all the time to deconstruct everything.

00:11:10: But you grew up with these sort of ideologies and also seeing these dichotomies.

00:11:17: It's not like my mom sat me down and

00:11:19: was like,

00:11:21: here's your pamphlet.

00:11:23: You know, it was growing up in spaces, following her while she was having her meetings or in her work day or while she was doing her organizing and mobilizing work, you know.

00:11:35: Eve's dropping on the kind of conversations that they had.

00:11:37: I was a kid, they were boring.

00:11:39: I wasn't interested.

00:11:39: I was annoyed.

00:11:40: I hated it.

00:11:41: You had

00:11:41: them being like, I wasn't dead.

00:11:43: I was like, oh God.

00:11:51: You know, But now realizing that through observing her and participating in her life as a child, she was giving me permission to be more than one thing as a woman.

00:12:04: She was giving me permission to have a full life.

00:12:07: She was giving me permission to integrate my children into my life and put them at the center of my life in spite of the fact that my work is also so multifaceted, you know?

00:12:18: And she was giving me permission, I think, also to travel because she, She went into exile in, so, Seventy-six happened.

00:12:26: And during Seventy-six, I think two of my uncles were at Morris Isaacson.

00:12:30: My mother and another one of her brothers were at University of the North Teflop.

00:12:35: All of them were activists.

00:12:37: They were the five kids in the family.

00:12:40: Within the space of a year, like four of them were in exile.

00:13:11: Some history.

00:13:13: What was this uprising and how did it change the game?

00:13:16: Settle in kittens because Tiff is about to take you to school.

00:13:19: A history lesson is loading.

00:13:22: The Soweto Uprising was a student-led protest that began on June sixteenth, nineteen seventy-six in Soweto, South Africa, and was an attempt to push back against the then apartheid government's plans to impose the Afrikaans language as a medium of instruction in schools for black students.

00:13:40: Events that triggered the uprising can be traced back to the policies of the apartheid government that resulted in the introduction of the Bantu Education Act in nineteen fifty-three.

00:13:52: The June sixteen uprising that began in Soweto spread country-wide, profoundly changing the social political landscape in South Africa.

00:14:01: The rise of the Black Consciousness Movement and the formation of the South African Students' Organization raised the political consciousness of many students, while others joined the wave of anti-apartheid sentiment within the student community.

00:14:16: When the language of Africans, alongside English, was made compulsory as a medium of instruction in schools in nineteen seventy-four, Black students began mobilizing themselves.

00:14:26: On June sixteenth, between three thousand and ten, thousands students were mobilized by the South African Student Movement's Action Committee, supported by the Black Consciousness Movement, and marched peacefully to demonstrate and protest against the government's directive.

00:14:44: Whilst peacefully marching, they were met by heavily armed police who fired tear gas and later live ammunition on demonstrating students.

00:14:53: This resulted in a widespread revolt that turned into an uprising against the government.

00:14:59: The aftermath of the events of June sixteenth had dire consequences for the apartheid government.

00:15:05: Images of the police firing on peacefully demonstrating students led to international condemnation of the apartheid government as its brutality was exposed.

00:15:15: Meanwhile, the weekend and exiled liberation movements received new recruits fleeing political persecution at home, giving new fever and energy to the struggle against apartheid.

00:15:26: As many of you might know, there is a powerful photo by Sam Zima of a dying, thirteen-year-old Hector Peterson, which epitomizes the brutality and heartbreak of the protests.

00:15:38: You think you haven't seen it before, but I'm one hundred percent sure you have.

00:15:50: I mean, it gets called the Soweto Uprisings, but they were national student ongoing uprisings that touched many campuses in every province.

00:16:04: Education for young people was destabilized that year.

00:16:08: And in the year that followed, my mom went into exile in the US.

00:16:12: And she left as a student.

00:16:16: But it was hot for my family.

00:16:18: The year that she left, my grandmother's house was raided.

00:16:23: The security police called my grandmother in to question her.

00:16:28: Letters that were going back and forth, obviously with kids who are living in different parts of the world.

00:16:33: her letters would get taken, and by the time she would get them, stuff would be blacked out, or she'd have to be called in and explained, what are you saying in this letter?

00:16:42: So it was stuff like that, which obviously touched the lives of millions and millions of people in this country.

00:16:51: But those are foundational traumas for many of us.

00:16:57: And the choices that she made because of those traumas have really given me the space to free myself, you know, her deciding to leave and her deciding to be in the US as a student, her deciding to raise a family there, her deciding to come back, you know.

00:17:18: And those were extremely difficult decisions at different points, you know, they impacted us sometimes in really hard ways.

00:17:24: But now I realize it's given me permission to travel and to be in the world and to see the world as a place that I can inhabit with my work and to give my children permission also to be black people in the world.

00:17:51: One thing we understand as Africans is the land, how it moves through you and sits with you and holds your past and present whilst being the stage for your future.

00:18:00: Truth be told, I think those who took the land understood this too, which is why they did it.

00:18:05: But you know what?

00:18:06: That's a conversation for another day, because I don't think some of y'all are ready for that, huh?

00:18:11: I once spoke to Numbusso, a brilliant cultural practitioner, who once told me about how there is a belief that the land even holds the traumas of those who reside on it, and gave me the example of the flooding happening in KwaZulu Natal, and which has also historically happened, which is a result of the bloodshed that has happened on that land.

00:18:31: Our histories are riddled with the scars of those who came before us, and those scars are inherited, like trinkets, family heirlooms of a sort.

00:18:40: Understanding this gives you a little more agency about what you choose to pass on to future generations.

00:18:46: But much as we try, the inheritance we pass on won't always be good vibes.

00:18:51: We have heaviness and traumas we sometimes pass on like prized heirlooms.

00:18:56: Life is tricky and being a mother in this world that seems to only want to bring you harm and judgment is even trickier.

00:19:09: It's tough.

00:19:10: I think

00:19:12: People

00:19:14: like shitting on single moms, you know?

00:19:16: They do.

00:19:17: They shit hard on single moms.

00:19:18: People like shitting on older black women.

00:19:21: And I mean, older black women are not perfect.

00:19:24: The aunties are also hectic, and the aunties become more hectic as they age.

00:19:28: They really do.

00:19:28: And I say it as a hectic aging auntie, you know?

00:19:32: And I mean, I think especially for that generation, like, your therapy was not a thing, right?

00:19:38: Emotional intelligence was not a thing.

00:19:40: That was a grin and bear it and get on with it, generation.

00:19:44: And the more competent you were at that, the better you did at life.

00:19:50: But at the expense of your softness, your sensitivity, your relationships, intimate relationships with people around you, especially your children, especially girl children.

00:20:01: So, I mean, the price was heavy, but the gifts are many.

00:20:05: I'm grateful for the choices that she made in her life.

00:20:08: That is just the most powerful narrative.

00:20:10: So like it is, because as a child of a single mother who did the moving around, not because of exile, right, but because you and baby things,

00:20:20: it...

00:20:21: It was just like that, get things done.

00:20:24: You were raised by a very practical person.

00:20:27: You're raised by somebody who's going to make some decisions.

00:20:30: And sure, they may put you on a therapy couch.

00:20:33: a few years later, as it did me, sitting there being like, I have a fear of flying right now.

00:20:38: I traced it back to my fear of moving, but it's fine.

00:20:41: But I think, yeah, no, hey.

00:20:44: That's deep.

00:20:45: Right in the middle of traveling and things.

00:20:47: It was a really hectic period.

00:20:48: And I started getting these panic attacks.

00:20:50: And then I'm sitting there on the couch.

00:20:52: I'm sitting there on my therapist couch at one point and I'm like, I don't know how we got onto it.

00:20:56: I'm like, I have this fear that if I get on a plane, I will come back and my home is not here.

00:21:02: And he's like... Which is such a baby fear, because you got on a plane as a baby, and when you got back, your home was not there.

00:21:11: There would be times

00:21:12: when my home was not

00:21:13: there.

00:21:13: And no one explained to you.

00:21:15: They just said, we're going.

00:21:16: We're going.

00:21:17: We're moving to the States.

00:21:18: You are moving to the UK.

00:21:20: We are moving to Tanzania.

00:21:22: And mom is like, you have a home because I'm here.

00:21:24: I'm here.

00:21:25: But as

00:21:26: you see other kids,

00:21:27: and they've got like, you know, they know where their stuff.

00:21:30: Toys are old.

00:21:32: So even though this is not the point of this podcast,

00:21:36: I feel you on

00:21:41: that one.

00:21:41: Oh my gosh.

00:21:45: So I listened to a podcast.

00:21:46: Yes, that is my equivalent of an academic saying.

00:21:49: I read a paper.

00:21:50: Anyway, anyway, I listened to a podcast that said diversity is actually the key to innovation.

00:21:56: No, this podcast came out before like DEI was like hot, hot, hot, right?

00:22:00: But

00:22:01: it was talking about how different identities were the key to growth and was actually the spark that made the magic happen.

00:22:09: Sitting in silos of similarity didn't make things move forward, but actually bred complacency and caused stagnation.

00:22:17: The podcast stated that a team with diverse voices and opinions actually had a wider, broader view of the situation, allowing for far more innovative and more effective problem solving.

00:22:29: Diversity is a superpower.

00:22:31: Instead of seeing one path through one lens, you see multiple parts.

00:22:36: This holds true even within the self.

00:22:38: Allowing for all parts of your existence to come together like a council of elders is powerful because you exist as a complex, magical human being.

00:22:48: You can be like, no girl, we need to break up with him because the economist in us sees that this is not financially feasible.

00:22:56: I know that Disney Princess believes in happily ever after, but Prince Charming over here is not

00:23:01: the one.

00:23:02: This notion segues very nicely to the idea of intersectionality.

00:23:07: So buckle in my babies, it's time for some feminist learning.

00:23:11: So for those of you who have been living under a feminist rock, intersectionality is a framework for understanding how different aspects of a person's social and political identity, such as race, gender, class and sexuality, can create overlapping and unique experiences of discrimination or privilege.

00:23:32: This awesome vibe was first coined in nineteen eighty nine by legal scholar and a legend, Kimberly Crenshaw, who coined the term intersectionality in a series of essays to describe how overlapping forms of discrimination like race and gender create uniquely compounded disadvantages, particularly for black women.

00:23:55: A little extra linguistic lesson, misogynoir.

00:23:57: A term referring to the unholy alliance between anti-black racism and misogyny, directed towards black women.

00:24:06: Apportmenteur is a word that combines misogyny and the French word for black noir.

00:24:12: It was coined by black queer feminist writer Professor Moyer Bailey in twenty ten.

00:24:17: Fun fact, this word was added to the Miriam Webster's dictionary in twenty twenty three.

00:24:24: This framework of understanding pertains to discrimination but also speaks to the power of having a myriad of views of the world.

00:24:31: During one particularly fun lunch with my dad, I explain to him why sometimes, despite being a prominent Kenyan man who has all the homegrown advantages and privileges, he leaves and wanders out into the world and gets treated a little bit differently, a little bit in a way that he sometimes does not care for.

00:24:49: I was like, sir.

00:24:50: In some parts of the world, you are not this titan of industry.

00:24:54: you are back home.

00:24:55: You're just a black African man who is no different from the black African man who drives a cab or opens up the door of a penthouse building.

00:25:04: You're just a guy.

00:25:05: You're just a black.

00:25:06: guy.

00:25:07: Man's mind was blown.

00:25:10: And I think we have another Crenshaw Convert.

00:25:13: Okay, maybe that's taking it a little bit too far, but I feel like I have sowed the seed.

00:25:18: He at least knows the word intersectionality now.

00:25:21: Like That's a start, right?

00:25:23: But I digress.

00:25:24: Holding on to the different parts that form the sum of the whole is how Lebo became the artist that she is.

00:25:31: Despite being thrust into the American landscape, keeping her South African identities and being told to question dominant narratives was her superpower.

00:25:43: What sort of woman did you blossom into?

00:25:46: And like, how have you navigated, built the career that you have?

00:25:50: Like, you have... a career, like Googling.

00:25:53: you is a land, right?

00:25:55: Googling you is a lot.

00:25:57: I'm just here being like, okay, so what must I put in the bio?

00:26:00: Because even the bio you sent me, baby, I cannot read the whole thing every day.

00:26:05: So how did you, how did you, like you, you started touching on like how your mother gave you the permission and also, like how did you build it?

00:26:13: And also just tell us a little bit about it because, you know, for those of people who are not Googleable, like who are not Googlers, but yeah.

00:26:25: What a question.

00:26:26: Okay, so we came back to South Africa when I was sixteen years old.

00:26:30: Prior to that, I grew up in a place called Providence, Rhode Island, which is on the northeast coast of America.

00:26:37: Rhode Island is the smallest state.

00:26:39: It's known for universities and as a kind of white liberal holiday town.

00:26:45: But the other side of it is that it's chalk a block full of immigrants.

00:26:50: It's three hours from New York.

00:26:52: So, you know, people like my parents, for example, you know, they met in New York and they.

00:26:57: didn't want to raise kids in New York because of the intensity of New York.

00:27:00: So, you know, it's the kind of place you travel up the freeway.

00:27:02: It's the next big, big Inyana city, but small Inyana, but close enough if you need to plug into your immigrant communities, you know, in the big city.

00:27:09: So

00:27:09: you can still find the food.

00:27:11: Yeah.

00:27:12: And the hairpings.

00:27:13: And you can go to the party and the wedding if you have to, you know what I mean?

00:27:17: So we grew up in Providence and I was surrounded by... A lot of immigrants.

00:27:21: I grew up with people from Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia and the Caribbean and West Africa and African Americans who had been there for generations and generations from the African Americans who were the descendants of the enslaved who, you know, were from Rhode Island back when it was a slave port.

00:27:43: to African-Americans whose families had come up in the Great Migration that had taken place, you know, in the earlier part of the twentieth century.

00:27:51: So it was, it was, you know, the Dominicans and Mexicans and Puerto Ricans and Haitians.

00:27:56: And at the time I didn't realize like what.

00:28:01: what a gift and a privilege that was, you know?

00:28:04: I kind of located myself, I think, within that as, okay, I'm also somebody who goes home and speaks a funny language and eats funny food, you know?

00:28:13: But when we come to school, you know, we all dance to the same music and talk about the same TV shows and we're all little Americans, you know what I mean?

00:28:21: But everybody was going home and eating something else.

00:28:25: I was eating pop, somebody else was eating platanos, somebody else was eating far.

00:28:30: And it was strange how in that reality, because of how deep white supremacy is, and I guess how deep the conditioning of school is, now I think about it, we should have had the space to

00:28:43: really

00:28:44: celebrate our diversity and share it.

00:28:48: But

00:28:49: I think the privilege of growing up in a house with parents who had the politics that my parents had was that I was not.

00:28:57: I was not completely annihilated by the information that I was getting at school, either about myself or about history.

00:29:05: So there was the practice of talking back.

00:29:10: you know, talking back to what I'm getting in the textbook, talking back to what we're seeing on the news, talking back to what we're reading in the newspapers.

00:29:18: You know, I carried that on at school.

00:29:20: So, you know, American school system teaches you that slavery is the biggest thing that's ever happened to black people, that black history begins and ends with slavery, and it rehashes the same icons over and over again.

00:29:32: That's how it was in my childhood.

00:29:34: You learn an incredible people, incredible icons, badass revolutionaries, Harriet Tubman and Frederick... Douglas and Martin Luther King, but even the way that you're taught, they've been stripped of their most radical elements and the most radical parts of their identities.

00:29:51: So by the time you're encountering them in the US textbook, it's like the flattest, most palatable version of who they are.

00:30:01: to whiteness, you know?

00:30:03: So the practice of going home and asking, going home and opening up the encyclopedia, going to the library and reading and checking and having that dialogue, that inculcated the thing that, okay, what's written on paper comes from somebody, you know?

00:30:20: This is not just fact.

00:30:22: Fact is, fact is fiction and everything, all information is worthy of interrogation.

00:30:29: It comes with an agenda, you know?

00:30:32: When we came back to South Africa, I remember I had a really powerful history teacher at school and he taught us that historiography as a practice, that the study of history is not just the study of the events, it's the study of who documented that history and why, you know?

00:30:52: I think all of these things were kind of shaping the voice that ended up coming out in my art, in my poetry, in the work that I do as a communicator, as a storyteller.

00:31:04: But I didn't realize that I was an artist until I got to university.

00:31:08: I'd kept a journal my whole life from, you know, when I was a little kid, I mean, before the internet, people went to libraries.

00:31:16: A simpler kind

00:31:18: of time.

00:31:18: A simpler kind of time.

00:31:20: My mom taught me how to use the library when I was.

00:31:21: I was really young and I loved the library and I loved books.

00:31:25: And there wasn't a lot of money for much of the stuff that we wanted when we were growing up.

00:31:28: But if I wanted a book, I got it, my mom showed me how to get it at the library.

00:31:34: So

00:31:35: I was an avid reader.

00:31:40: And by the time I got to university, I got exposed to the spoken word scene.

00:31:46: This was like in the late nineties, early two thousands in Johannesburg.

00:31:49: So literally like, This was in the heart of the youth creative revolution of this country, right?

00:31:58: It was like apartheid ended and, you know, the new South Africa was born.

00:32:05: New identity formation became such a big project, a big national project.

00:32:11: all of a sudden as well because of the integration of human rights culture, freedom of expression, the possibilities for different kinds of art forms, expression, for stories, for just a creative explosion from... people who had previously been marginalized or silenced, you know?

00:32:35: So you had, you know, you had like youth culture just exploding.

00:32:39: You had like Boomshaka and Guaito and the beginnings of South African hip hop and, but also like underground stuff happening as well, like trip hop and drum and bass and, you know, experimental live art and performance art, going to a club and seeing a poet or an MC or a comedian with the band and then a live painter and a dancer.

00:33:01: Spaces like Con Hill were being transformed at that time into what we understand them as now.

00:33:07: Like, so you had, you know, witnessing the landscape of the city changing, witnessing a space like Con Hill changing from being women's jail to becoming the constitutional court.

00:33:18: Politburo used to host parties at Con Hill.

00:33:21: You know, the first time I saw Nelisi Wadqabab perform, the first time I saw so many DJs like from that time.

00:33:27: And there was this interesting... cross-pollination of politics and art in the world that I found myself moving through as a young person.

00:33:38: My family stayed in Yovl.

00:33:39: My family's from Soweto, so we started out in Soweto when we came back.

00:33:43: Then we went to Yovl.

00:33:45: I lived in Yovl for ten years.

00:33:46: I still see myself as a child of Yovl in many ways, you know.

00:33:49: People do not escape Yovl.

00:33:50: No, you don't escape.

00:33:51: Like from what I can gather.

00:33:52: Yovl

00:33:53: is a philosophy.

00:33:54: It's a philosophy.

00:33:55: It's

00:33:55: a way of life.

00:33:55: It's a way of life.

00:33:57: But it's always been immigrants, right?

00:34:00: So even from back in the day, you know, the early twentieth century when it was the Eastern European Jews and, you know, that those waves of European immigrants who were fleeing the war who were coming, right?

00:34:13: Yovl was created.

00:34:14: for them.

00:34:15: So Yovo has, it has a high street that had shops.

00:34:19: Everything was in walking distance.

00:34:21: I was so spoiled because of Yovo because I didn't learn how to, I didn't get a license because Yovo, everything was in walking distance.

00:34:28: And if it wasn't walking distance, you could get a cab anytime of the night.

00:34:31: So I could go where I wanted to go and I could grow as an artist.

00:34:36: I could do gigs.

00:34:37: I could travel.

00:34:38: I could be out as a young woman in the night.

00:34:41: right?

00:34:43: So, Jovo is, there's schools in walking distances, there's churches and shuls in walking distance.

00:34:51: So, it's village, you know, it's like a community.

00:34:54: And by the time we moved there in the late nineties, there were My street had a drug dealer and you know, there were the sex workers who stayed next door.

00:35:05: There was my Africans teacher who stayed like two houses away.

00:35:08: There was a lady in parliament on the corner.

00:35:10: There was the crooked cop across the street.

00:35:12: So it was really,

00:35:13: you know.

00:35:14: Something for everyone.

00:35:15: Something for everybody.

00:35:18: But I realized like it was that period where it was transitioning into becoming a slum.

00:35:24: I think white people then already saw it as a slum.

00:35:27: They were running away.

00:35:28: We got there as the white people were leaving, but the artists stayed behind.

00:35:33: So we got the artists, the immigrants, the hippie revolutionary whites wouldn't leave.

00:35:39: There's always

00:35:40: a few.

00:35:41: There's always a few.

00:35:44: It was a great vibe.

00:35:47: And that space, I feel like that was my art school.

00:35:51: That was where I saw what a creative life looked like.

00:36:24: We have to take a minute and a beat to talk about the late great Lebo Matosa.

00:36:29: I first arrived in South Africa a long time ago and one of the songs I was obsessed with was I Love Music by Lebo Matosa.

00:36:38: It was magical and had my teenage self spinning around.

00:36:43: What I didn't realize then was this was one of the first instances I saw of a black girl being truly unapologetic.

00:36:50: I was one of those, sit like a lady, stop playing in the mud, get down from that tree, kind of little girls, which was kind of a foreshadowing of who I was going to become, like, look, if you know, you know.

00:37:02: Lebo was proud and unapologetic and wore track pants to random places and did what and who she wanted, which I loved.

00:37:12: The legend goes that Brenda Farsi walked so Lebo Matosa could run.

00:37:16: Or maybe they both ran?

00:37:17: They kind of like overlapped.

00:37:19: But Brenda Farsi was brash and also unapologetic.

00:37:23: I'm just gonna keep using that word because that's what they were.

00:37:26: And was so bold that they didn't even have to come out back in the nineties.

00:37:32: She was just gay.

00:37:33: One minute there was no girlfriend, next minute there was a girlfriend and the whole country and continent moved on.

00:37:39: No controversy, just queer vibes.

00:37:42: Bold, proud, black women.

00:37:45: Now do yourself a solid and go listen to some boom shaka and take yourself back in time.

00:37:51: Just go listen to the entire body of work of Lebo Matosa, Brenda Farsi.

00:37:56: Just take yourself back.

00:37:58: It's a vibe.

00:37:59: It's a vibe and I highly recommend

00:38:03: it.

00:38:05: The standards by which I was taught to kind of gauge whose art was popping and whose art wasn't, it was based on your skill, on your offering, on the content, on what you're saying, you know?

00:38:19: And the politics of what you're saying also mattered, you know?

00:38:23: And these were also young people who were working in spaces like SABC, who were working for Mail and Guardian, they were journalists, they were media practitioners.

00:38:32: So stuff that blew up on the underground very quickly made it mainstream.

00:38:36: And I think that's how I was able to grow and to maneuver and to find myself working on much bigger platforms.

00:38:44: The distance between the underground and the mainstream at that stage was like, by the time I figured out, okay, this is what I wanna do and I'm gonna do it and I'm gonna do it and do it and do it to death until I become the best at it.

00:39:00: Congratulations,

00:39:01: by the way.

00:39:01: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

00:39:02: Hello.

00:39:06: It was empowering to realize that you can, again, I can make my own narrative.

00:39:14: I can make my own narrative even about myself.

00:39:17: I can make my own narrative about the things that I care about.

00:39:21: I can introduce narratives into the space.

00:39:24: I can shift narratives.

00:39:28: which is not always clean work.

00:39:30: It's often messy work.

00:39:32: It's often hard

00:39:32: work.

00:39:32: It's often very hard work, yeah.

00:39:34: And you get a lot of backlash for it as well, too.

00:39:36: So speaking of the backlash, what was it like being a woman in this industry?

00:39:41: Oh my God.

00:39:41: Because

00:39:42: I know some people, like my partner is kind of vaguely, but the theater more theaters, but

00:39:47: you've dabbled

00:39:48: in it.

00:39:48: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do theater, yeah.

00:39:49: There's

00:39:50: so many men's is there.

00:39:50: I'm just going to go on record sale.

00:39:52: How is everything a male dominated industry?

00:39:54: Number one.

00:39:55: Number two.

00:39:57: What was it like for you?

00:39:58: Like, what was it like?

00:39:59: You know, just sit here.

00:40:00: There's a therapy session.

00:40:01: Do what you need

00:40:01: to do.

00:40:02: There's a therapy session.

00:40:02: Ooh, and these earrings are heavy.

00:40:03: OK, let me take them

00:40:04: off.

00:40:04: No, release the earrings.

00:40:05: Let's

00:40:05: release the earrings.

00:40:06: We've got other shiny, shiny things happening.

00:40:08: Right.

00:40:08: Let's

00:40:09: get into the story.

00:40:10: The bedding of a woman.

00:40:12: The bedding of a woman.

00:40:14: No.

00:40:16: Man, you know that.

00:40:17: That part of the journey has been trash, continues to be trash.

00:40:22: The misogyny of it all is trash.

00:40:25: I think though, you know, The just embodied feminine energy is just such powerful.

00:40:30: It's such a powerful creative force.

00:40:33: I've never felt sorry for myself as a woman.

00:40:36: I've never felt sorry for myself for being a woman because the experience of being a woman is such a fucking powerful thing.

00:40:44: It's magical.

00:40:46: It is magical.

00:40:47: It just unfolds layers and

00:40:50: layers and layers and

00:40:52: layers.

00:40:52: And it gets better.

00:40:54: It gets sweeter.

00:40:55: You get smarter.

00:40:56: get stronger, you become more sensitive, you get closer to yourself.

00:41:00: You know, I'm perimenopausal, transitioning into menopause, and it's just like, I mean, my relationship with my body, my relationship with my confidence, my relationship with even my past, like... I kind of look at all these different things that I've been through and all these different versions of myself and they feel like my kids, you know?

00:41:20: So healing now feels like holding space for a thirty-seven year old me, holding space for a twenty-five year old me, holding space for a twenty-two year old me who was just entering the industry and didn't realize what she was getting into, you know what I mean?

00:41:43: It's that time again.

00:41:45: The part where the guest says the quiet part out loud.

00:41:48: What I'm loving about this segment is that it's becoming something that organically comes up.

00:41:53: Like it writes itself.

00:41:55: I don't even have to ask the question anymore.

00:41:57: The guest has a moment where they're like, actually, I've been wanting to talk about this for a hot damn minute.

00:42:04: This is the part where you say the thing that will have people rushing to your comment section with the fire of a thousand suns.

00:42:10: In this instance, Level breaks down how the entertainment industry runs on the cannibalized flesh of women.

00:42:18: Yeah, it is that.

00:42:25: loves cannibalizing young female flesh.

00:42:29: Oh, I'm so glad to be talking to you, because I can finally have a place outside of my own head to talk about this shit.

00:42:33: No,

00:42:33: we must say the things.

00:42:34: Let's

00:42:34: say the things.

00:42:35: Say

00:42:35: the wild thing.

00:42:35: Say the wild thing.

00:42:37: So

00:42:38: there's a reason why you think about all of your favorite artists.

00:42:42: Think about all of them, all of them, all of them, all your favorite women artists, all your favorite black women artists.

00:42:48: Why is it that their biggest albums are their first and second albums or their first and second shows or their first and second projects?

00:42:55: Because that's when they were at their most vulnerable and easiest to manipulate.

00:43:06: We cannibalize young women.

00:43:10: This industry cannibalizes young women, right?

00:43:17: I remember being told by women who I love and respect for mintable, brilliant women.

00:43:23: Well, like, you're not gonna have a career past thirty-five.

00:43:26: I'm forty-six.

00:43:27: You,

00:43:28: right?

00:43:28: Like, to your face.

00:43:29: Yeah,

00:43:29: you're not gonna have a career.

00:43:30: And I mean, these were women who were saying it because they'd experienced it.

00:43:33: It's not like they were bullshitting me and they were saying, you know, they were telling me because they were hating on me.

00:43:37: They were saying it because that's what the industry was actively doing to them.

00:43:41: Like, that was just the fact.

00:43:43: That was the fact, you know?

00:43:47: Labo takes the idea of sucking the life force out of the female form even further.

00:43:55: So, I mean, I think very early in my career, I knew that I was kind of straddling two terrains because I did have a big visible mainstream platform on television.

00:44:07: But I've always been a quirky artist.

00:44:10: I've always been outside of the mainstream.

00:44:14: I've always been defining and creating my artistic identity for myself, you know?

00:44:19: And I'm grateful for poetry because while I was building this, you know, I guess it's not... Then it was two very clear streams.

00:44:27: Now it's kind of many streams, but... poetry, theater.

00:44:37: Despite the fact that life is filled with people and things that want to derail you, take from you and discard you, level stayed the course and stayed true to herself.

00:44:48: The odds.

00:44:49: anchored me into an artistic identity that wasn't defined by the mainstream.

00:44:54: So I was able to leave the popular culture world of television and the way that I was packaged in television and the way television and mainstream media sell art and sell people and sell brands and commodities and people as commodities.

00:45:09: I was able to leave that world and then find myself in the world of poetry where I was standing on stage with writers in their seventies and in their sixties and who were kicking ass at what they do.

00:45:19: And, you know, and in a space where people were working intergenerationally and where knowledge was a cumulative thing, right?

00:45:28: I mean, Giorra Pezzucho Zitzila died with his laptop on his legs in hospital, you know, Toni Morrison published what the year or two years before she died, right?

00:45:39: Bell looks, you know, so as a writer, your intellectual life and your creative life lasts as long as you last, it lasts as long as you choose.

00:45:49: So I realized that, okay, I'm being primed, I'm being cooked in this industry, again, coming back to feminist principles, right?

00:45:56: I'm being primed, I'm being cooked in this industry that packages people for a very short shelf life, you know, and all the anxiety that comes with it and all the cruelty that comes with that, right?

00:46:06: But then on the other hand, I'm like, but also I'm running a marathon.

00:46:11: with the poetry, it was a long con.

00:46:13: This is a long, long, long haul.

00:46:16: I'll always do this.

00:46:17: I'll always have this.

00:46:19: And this thing is a mutating thing.

00:46:21: This thing can become theater.

00:46:23: This thing can become visual art.

00:46:25: This thing can become fashion.

00:46:27: This thing can become whatever I want it to be.

00:46:30: It's mine, right?

00:46:33: So I think that has been... liberating.

00:46:37: one of probably and probably one of the reasons why I was I've been able to survive is because I wasn't solely defined by the machinery of fame.

00:46:44: I never have been okay you know yeah and I entered that world as an artist.

00:46:53: again.

00:46:54: it goes back to define yourself despite the forces around you figuring out what your vibes are and locking in for level.

00:47:03: the heart of a hustler always beats strong.

00:47:09: Also, again, in my early twenties, I mean, my mother being a single mother, she wasn't.

00:47:13: She wasn't enthusiastic about the idea that I wanted to be an artist.

00:47:16: So I knew that I had to make a living, you know?

00:47:18: And I've always been a hustler.

00:47:19: I've always been a working girl.

00:47:21: I've always, you know, I grew up at BabySat.

00:47:23: I did here.

00:47:24: I worked in retail.

00:47:26: I was a receptionist.

00:47:27: I did temp work.

00:47:28: I did switchboard.

00:47:29: Like, if the one thing the girl knows how to do, it is to work.

00:47:33: I will find a job.

00:47:34: I will make a job.

00:47:36: I work my

00:47:37: ass off.

00:47:37: You will make rent.

00:47:38: Please, don't even.

00:47:40: I don't want to hear.

00:47:43: I don't wanna hear.

00:47:45: I don't wanna hear, you know?

00:47:47: So

00:47:48: I was like, okay, what can I do?

00:47:51: Everybody's telling me that I'm a great poet, but everybody's also telling me I'll never make a living doing this.

00:47:55: How am I gonna make a living?

00:47:56: I have an ability with language.

00:47:57: I have an ability to connect with people.

00:47:59: What can I do with these things?

00:48:00: All right, I can communicate.

00:48:02: I can work on TV.

00:48:03: I can work in broadcasting.

00:48:04: I can write.

00:48:05: I can do columns.

00:48:06: I can write plays.

00:48:07: I can do, I can do, I can record.

00:48:09: I can do albums.

00:48:10: I can do, I can do, and then.

00:48:11: You know, twenty-five years later I've done those things.

00:48:14: I've done those things.

00:48:16: I've done those things.

00:48:17: I've worked in media as a presenter and as a producer on multiple shows.

00:48:21: I've worked as a voiceover artist, voicing documentaries, voicing current affairs shows, voicing ads, voicing campaigns, being the voice of brands and all kinds of stuff.

00:48:31: I've done, I've emceed, I've facilitated, I've worked for big multinational Fortune-Five Hundred brands.

00:48:38: I've done script writing for, you know, for CEOs, for I write my ass off.

00:48:46: And that is just, that's apart from my own artistic body of work, the books and the poems and the plays and the art that I have made that will outlive me.

00:49:02: And that's a wrap for part one.

00:49:04: Make sure you show up for part two as we continue the conversation with Lebo.

00:49:09: In the next episode, we throw in thoughts on feminist fuckery, changing hearts and minds and the burden of black women.

00:49:16: Shout out to the Global Unit for Feminist and Gender Democracy of the Heinrich Bohr Foundation that is hosting this podcast and my magical team, Ray and Sheldon, for that post-apocalyptic production.

00:49:30: Till the next episode, pick up gardening and make Bloody Marys from your homegrown tomatoes.

00:49:35: Take up erotic poetry and gift your masterpieces to people as birthday presents, or even learn to knit and exclusively make lingerie because it's all chaos anyway and this is not the apocalypse we signed up for.