#4 When Anger Works – Part One


When a growing movement of young people places itself in harms way to stop injustice, it can be powerful and unpredictable.  Often it is fueled by the white-hot anger of knowing that you’re on the side of justice when those in power have failed to make the change you need. We can see this with the powerful #FeesMustFall student movement in South Africa.

This is a two part episode about times when direct action was used to confront an overwhelming force. Part one looks at the remarkable #FeesMustFall student movement in South Africa, that all started when someone threw poo at a statue.

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Full transcript of Episode 4:

“When Anger Works – Part One”

It all begins with poo. Let me explain. For years, black students across South Africa, like Anzio Jacobs, had a problem with a statue at the University of Cape Town. A statue.

ANZIO: Oh, my word, we’ve hated that statue for as long as it’s been here…

HOST: The statue was named after

ANZIO: Cecil John Rhodes.

HOST: That’s right. As in the Rhodes scholarship. Cecil Rhodes. British mining magnate, politician and…

ANZIO: A good big advocate of racial segregation.

HOST: But it didn’t just stop at the statue. The entire university was littered with monuments, buildings and rooms all named after heroes of colonialism. The place was dripping in white privilege. The university just saw it as part of its history. But for many black students, the buildings were named after people who’d murdered their ancestors.

Then, one day in March 2015, Ramabina Mahapa – who was President of the Student Council – got a phone call.

RAMABINA: I actually got a call from my SRC colleague saying —There’s a naked black man throwing poo at the statue of Rhodes.  Go down and see what’s happening.

HOST: That’s right a man was throwing poo at Cecil Rhodes. When Ramabina got there he saw the imposing statue of the white colonialist – who believed that whites were superior to blacks – sitting in a chair, his chin resting on his hand – covered in human faeces.

RAMABINA: I was about 5 or so meters away, you know…There was a smell…you know, a smell of faeces, there was also a mixture of other things in it.

HOST: I’m Amanda Tattersall, welcome to Changemakers, supported by our launch partner Mobilisation Lab.

HOST: Have you ever been so angry about the injustice of something that you’ve considered doing stuff that is way outside your comfort zone?

You see something on the news, and it sets your mind racing about what you’d do if only you had the power and resources?

Perhaps you’ve acted in anger at some small, and surprised even yourself?

Anger can be an enormous motivator especially when something feels unjust.

But unless anger is effectively deployed, it can also be debilitating and drive us to do things that aren’t really solutions at all.

Today, part one, of a two-part exploration of what happens when anger ignites a movement.

HOST: I’m in Johannesburg South Africa at Wits University where, two years ago, people decided that access to education had become so expensive that it’s become this generation’s battleground. It is a story of a simple demand that led to an explosive fight that opened up a Pandoras box of fundamental questions about equality, and how to achieve it. And just a warning: it’s a tough story. Let’s go.

HOST: The poo had been thrown by Chumani Maxwele, a student who lived in a township just out of Cape Town. A place, like many townships, with no proper sanitation. Instead they have mobile toilets with buckets to catch the waste.

INTERVIEWER: Why poo? Why’d he throw poo?

RAMABINA: He was saying people in this high tower called UCT must also experience what it’s like to live in a township where, you are on a daily basis exposed to the smell of poo…

And so he said it was an attempt to link UCT to the struggles in townships.

HOST: Not long after Ramabina arrived, Security was called, and after a scuffle, Chumani was charged with assault.

HOST: In the days that followed, students held a meeting to air their grievances. Chumani was not the only poor black student who hated the statue, but the university refused to remove it. They said it was part of the University’s heritage.

Lindiwe was a student at the time. A week and a half after the original incident, she was walking down the stairs towards the statue with three friends.

LINDIWE: And I saw a group of students,, protesting and I asked them:—What are you guys doing?— … And one of them was, like:—No, we’re protesting because we are tired of institutionalized racism that is happening in the school

HOST: They were demanding the removal of the statue. For Lindiwe, that statue went to the heart of what she felt was wrong with the University.

But Lindiwe’s friends were hesitant. They were black, but they also felt UCT had a reputation to uphold. As blacks, they felt pressure to behave like model students in this institution of white privilege. They didn’t want to rock the boat, because that would confirm everything that whites thought about blacks already.

LINDIWE: they cannot embarrass the white culture of this university. So my friends were, like:— Nah! No, no, no, Chubby, we’re gonna go, like, no, we’re not going to do this

HOST: So even though Lindiwe didn’t know anyone there, she decided in that split second to join the protest.

LINDIWE: And my friends were like: “No, we go”. And I’m: “Okay go, shop, I’ll see you guys.”

HOST: Little did she know, that that was the last time she’d see her friends for weeks.

LINDIWE: So we started singing and we students were like, protesting, protesting, it was just a very little group, right.

HOST: They decided to march down to the administration block to demand the statue’s removal.

LINDIWE: As we were walking down, some of the students kept on joining, you know, like, students, some of the students were like: Ooh, protest!

HOST: Nothing like this had ever been done before at the University.

LINDIWE: By the time we got to the admin building, there was like, a lot of us, right.

HOST: The University’s Vice Chancellor came out to meet the protesters, and he told them they didn’t know what they were talking about. That there was no institutionalised racism.

LINDIWE: We are the most diverse. Everything is fine. We were like, actually: We’re not good.

… This is Africa and the university looks like it’s in Europe.

HOST: The point that the protesters wanted to make was: sure, the University had black students but they were expected to study surrounded by symbols of those who’d murdered and raped their ancestors. That was not an environment conducive to allowing black students to thrive.

LINDIWE: And one of the students just like took the microphone away from the vice-chancellor and was like: “Let’s go in.” And that was it.

HOST: It was a complete shock to everyone. Nobody knew exactly why they were going in and occupying the administration building.

LINDIWE: We went in and we started singing and singing and singing.

HOST: A movement had begun. Complete with a hashtag: Rhodes Must Fall.

LINDIWE: Nobody had planned to stay—Tonight, I am definitely sleeping on a carpet—nobody.

HOST: But they did. And it wasn’t just one night.

LINDIWE: We slept in the administration building for about a month.

HOST: The students came up with a memorandum of why they were protesting, and told the administration they were not leaving until they’d won. All around the country, students had been protesting against fees, but this protest was different. And it wasn’t just about getting rid of the statue.

LINDIWE: When we said Rhodes Must Fall, we meant the legacy of Rhodes must fall. That means institutional racism, patriarchy, rape culture, all the things that you can think of, all the oppressions that you can think of that came with Rhodes.

HOST: Access to the university for black people was about so much more than fees. They wrote down their demands. But more importantly, they started discussing tactics. After all, they had time on their hands.

LINDIWE: What’s the next plan? What are we going to do next? How are we going to, to, to-Which pressure points are we going to use to get management to agree to most of the things we are saying. And…We learnt.

HOST: Every night, they would invite academics from universities across South Africa to come and deliver lectures to the occupation to help them work through the fundamental questions they were having about their education.

LINDIWE: What did we mean when we say decolonize all institutions?

HOST: One of their demands was that they wanted the curriculum to be less European, and more African, to decolonise the curriculum.

LINDIWE: That’s when we started like formulating the ideology of Fallism,

INTERVIEWER: What is Fallism?

LINDIWE: Fallism is an ideology that is based on 3 pillars which is black consciousness, pan-Africanism, and black radical feminism.

HOST: Fallism. A philosophy that united different identities behind a single united demand: to strip the colonial vestiges of white privilege that remained 25 years after apartheid had fallen.

LINDIWE: We had to learn to embrace our blackness, and, like, teach each other black consciousness and love each other in our blackness.

HOST: It was a period of intense politicisation.

LINDIWE: Being in that space and everything I learned in that space… It was just like…the best thing ever.

HOST: The protesters decided that white people would not be allowed to join in their occupation.

LINDIWE: It was like, for blacks only. And for the first time in the history of the University of Cape Town, me and many other black students, we felt like we belonged in the university. For the first time ever.

HOST: Why?

LINDIWE: For the first time, you could raise your hand in a room full of people and speak. And not be laughed at and be looked at as a person who has not been educated enough for you to be in that space.

HOST: Some white students started getting it. They started their own solidarity group, Disrupting Whiteness.

But Lindiwe says that being in a black-only space allowed her to realise for the first time that she was not alone in feeling out of place.

She was a 28-year-old first year student, sitting amongst a whole lot of 18-year-old white kids. But it wasn’t the age gap, it was everything.

LINDIWE: My education was teaching me how to learn how to type, so I can either be a receptionist or how to make tea, how to sew, how to cook.

HOST: The occupation was a space for students like Lindiwe to both learn and unlearn.

HOST: Weeks went on, and the students refused to leave.

LINDIWE: They thought we were going to get tired and move. No, we didn’t.

HOST: The Vice-Chancellor convened an emergency meeting of the University Council with only one item on the agenda. The removal of the statue. There were 30 members of the council. Just one was black.

LINDIWE: We were outside the building singing and they knew the outside, singing, you know, just like (hand claps) —You better make a good decision because it’s like about to go down, you know.

HOST: Realising it was the only possible decision, the council unanimously agreed to the statue’s removal. It was a remarkable turnaround. Within days, trucks arrived to take it down. As they drove in, the students left the building they’d occupied for weeks, and marched down.

LINDIWE: There’s a picture of me crying. I don’t remember myself crying but there is a picture of me tearing up on that day.

HOST: The statue had been removed. The students went home for their mid-year break. Meanwhile, Universities across South Africa started announcing their fee increases for the following year.

And that year, they were big. Fasiha was at Wits University, in Johannesburg.

FASIHA: it’s opened up at 13%

HOST: 13% might not sound like a lot in isolation, but that was on the back of years of increases.

FAHISA: Remember this fee increment essentially comes after a number of years of at least a 10% fee increment. So over 5 years, your fees increase by a, by 50% at least.

HOST: In fact, the fees were becoming prohibitive.

FAHISA: This kind of increment was going to close the doors of higher learning to the poor black child.

HOST: There were students who wanted to keep going with their degrees, but were being forced to leave because the fees were too high.

The stakes weren’t about the affordability of education so much as access to education at all.

 

But while students had tried to oppose fee increases for years, this time was different.

Rhodes had fallen.

By bringing down a statue, they’d learnt the University administration could be defeated. The students at Wits, inspired by what had happened at Cape Town University, decided to get organised and fight.

FAHISA: We get together a planning committee. We divide ourselves in to 3 main teams. The first is the research team, to look again into the financial element of it. … a social media team, And the third was the mobilization team

HOST: They called it “Wits Fees Must Fall”
FAHISA: Now traditionally in African society, it’s toi toi, you hand over memorandum, sing some struggle or revolutionary songs. You go home, you wait for a response. But that particular protest action was not proving to be effective anymore. It was out-done, it was dead.

HOST: They thought about the University’s weaknesses.

FAHISA: What is going to shake it all up and remind them that in fact, you wouldn’t have a university without students? That students are the biggest stakeholders here, not the chairperson of council. There would be no Wits without students.

HOST: A student strike. It seemed far-fetched.

FAHISA: Now, if I’m being honest, many of us didn’t believe we had the capacity to do it.

HOST: They printed some pamphlets and called a mass meeting on the 14th October.

FAHISA: We told students 12 o’clock at the west campus tunnel.

 

HOST: 12 O’Clock was a fairly standard time for a traditional student protest.

FAHISA: The idea being, we were also trying to trick management, that we would march up the road and hand over a memorandum. So that’s what management was prepared for.

HOST: Instead they did something completely off script.

FAHISA: Woke up at the early hours of the morning. Got to Wits about 5 or 6 o’clock. And we sat down…in front of the gates. There were not many people, maybe 20 or so. And we refused to move. And it was terrifying.

HOST: They had no idea how many people would turn up. Remember this was the first gathering they’d called. And all the pamphlets said it would start at midday. But word started spreading. The hashtag #WitsFeesMustFall and – presumptuously – #WitsFeesWillFall started trending on Twitter

FAHISA: From 6am, our numbers grew. We didn’t spend our whole time at the gates. We went through university. But by around midday…there were at least a thousand people, from 20, 30 people in the morning.

HOST: Meanwhile, their Vice Chancellor, Adam Habib, was in Durban for a conference and refused to engage.

FAHISA: So he doesn’t say anything on the first day. Okay, wake up, we do it again the second day. We said “Adam Habib, we’re waiting for you. We’re not going anywhere. Your university will remain shut down until you take us seriously.”

HOST: Finally on day three, a Friday, the Vice Chancellor returns. Negotiations to stop the fee increase begin. The students occupy the University’s Senate House, which they rename Solomon Mahlangu House, after an apartheid era hero. They demand that the negotiations are done on their own terms. And they live stream them on Facebook, as they stretched into the night.

FAHISA: That’s when other universities started to contact us. They started to say … you guys are not the only ones fighting an increment. And that’s when we shared ideas on how did you guys shut down.

HOST: They fail to reach agreement.

FAHISA: By Monday or Tuesday the next week, every single institution in this country was shut down.

HOST: The student movement was now united in its opposition to the national government. Remember, the party in charge of the government is the ANC. As in Nelson Mandela. As in, the party that brought down apartheid. Indeed many of the student leaders were in the ANC themselves.

FAHISA: And this is one of the first times in the post-1994 era, that you see young members of the ANC holding the ANC accountable. They were shocked.

HOST: The students decide to march, across Nelson Mandela Bridge, to the ANC’s headquarters.

FAHISA: It’s not like any governmental building you are going to. You are marching to the headquarters of the African National Congress. The liberator.

HOST: The government was not used to being criticised, and, to put it mildly, they didn’t take it lightly.

FAHISA: They had heard rumors that there was an attempted march… And that the riot police had closed off the Nelson Mandela Bridge.

HOST: But the student’s marched anyway. It had the effect of moving public perception.

FAHISA: The first few days was that we were hooligans, we were write-offs, we were radicals. Some people even called as monkeys. It was horrible. But by Days 3 and 4, we were called heroes. We were called a generation of young people who were not going to accept the status quo.

HOST: Busisiwe Seabe was also at Wits University. She says shutting down the bridge made them realise the leverage they could exercise with direct action.

BUSISIWE: It doesn’t only cause traffic, but it means that people who have to go to work in Sandton which is the richest square mile in Africa, that is where the middle-class works and that is where the Johannesburg Stock Exchange is, can’t get to work. Which means that particular environment loses money on that day and that disrupts the economy. And that’s exactly what we wanted.

HOST:Over the coming days, they ramped up the pressure on the government.

BUSISIWE: We wanted to affect the economy of the state so we could be taken seriously. So we thought of everything. Blocking the national highways. Blocking bridges. Stopping people from going to work. We even spoke to the taxi association, …So we had a transport shut-down of about 2 days in the entire province of Gauteng in order for us to affect the economy and get what we wanted.

INTERVIEWER: Can I ask, where did you get all these extraordinary ideas from?

BUSISIWE: They came through…what we like calling Makabulo sessions, and I hope people will learn this word. Makabulo sessions are essentially, for the lack of a better word, it’s not arguments, but it is…us lobbying each other, right.

HOST: Thanks to these tactics, it was a national issue. The President himself stepped in and announced he would meet with student leaders.

That’s right. Within a week, they’d thrust this issue onto the national stage, and forced the President to the negotiating table.

HOST: Back in a moment.

HOST: So the President had agreed to meet with the students. But the students who’d ignited the initial protest at Wits University weren’t impressed.

FAHISA: Wits took a decision not to attend. We said we’d be on the ground with everyone. Wits students on the ground.

HOST: The students thought it was more of a publicity stunt.

FAHISA: Yeah. Eat some lovely food. Take some pictures. I’m such a great president.

HOST: They say success has many parents, but in social movement campaigns success has many hangers-on, and unfortunately the Fees Must Fall movement was no different.

Sometimes they might be saboteurs, people who infiltrate your events, and want to undermine it.

When I was organising the Iraq War protests in 2003, at a crucial point, just as we were gaining momentum politically, someone threw red paint on a politician’s car. It totally undermined our message that our movement was respectable and mainstream. Many of us – including me – were convinced the man had done it to undermine our cause.

At other times the infiltration can come from people who share your political aim but disagree on the tactics.

I remember during the same period, one radical group decided it would be a good idea to use school students as cannon fodder against the police. During one confrontation, the police bashed these poor teenagers with batons. The radicals said it proved how brutal the police were, but that’s not something we were ever trying to prove. In fact, the police had been relatively accommodating up until then.

The only thing it proved to me — and more importantly, to the general public – was that our movement had been infiltrated by reckless radicals who thought it was alright to put school students in harms way.

Unfortunately for the Fees Must Fall protesters, the sudden mass mobilisation, and its attending media attention, brought with it its own set of hangers-on.

HOST: The day the student leaders were meeting with President Zuma, Fahisa arrived at around 10am.

FAHISA: It’s just anarchy. Burning things, rocks being thrown.

HOST: Up until this point, the students had been successful because they’d diverted from the normal script, taking university management by surprise when they shut down the campuses and then standing up and marching on their party headquarters.

And now it seemed their movement had been hijacked by people who wanted instead to follow a very, very familiar script.

FAHISA: Now you get a group of people who now say – This is a perfect opportunity to hijack something. And there was an attempt to make things turn violent.

HOST: It was the worst type of hijack too.

FAHISA: I’m a hundred percent sure, there were other members that had a different agenda that was not free education, who had entered into the space.

HOST: The radical elements were calling for an overthrow of the entire national government. An absurd demand that simply allowed the government to paint all the students as extremists. Fahisa talked it through with other leaders.

FAHISA:Okay what are going to do? We’re going to do what we do best. March. Because we march very well. So we gather all our people together.

HOST: By this stage, the authorities took the threat of students seriously.

FAHISA: As we …marched past, there were huge Caspers there. They had their guns loaded, ready, I mean ready to shoot.

HOST: So they march through the streets of the city, down to the Union buildings. By this point, the crowd was 10,000 strong, all of them waiting for the outcome of the meeting with President Zuma.

FAHISA: People had their radios on. And that’s how we heard.

HOST: President Zuma announced a moratorium on all fee increases across the country for a year. It was a genuine victory.

RAMABINA: That was amazing because I had thought that it was impossible.

FAHISA: But as soon as that announcement came, people didn’t disperse. I think they wanted to remain. They wanted to be with each other. But the police were not having that. They wanted everyone to leave.

Now it was not like a protest of a few thousand. There was at least 10,000 people there. At least. Coz it was a national thing. When people refused to move or leave…The police then started to use their water cannons, tear gas.

FAHISA: And the Caspers, they’re like big police vehicles, armoured police vehicles, basically drove down and forced the students onto the streets.

And then they got out. Some of them were on foot, some of them were in their vehicles. And then they opened fire with rubber bullets. That was the first time we came, I came into contact with rubber bullets, personally. It was horrible.

HOST: So they’d won. But then literally moments later, the police started shooting at them.

INTERVIEWER: Did you feel like you’d won?

FAHISA: Yes and no… Yes in the fact that we had brought this issue up. That we had done in 9 days what so many couldn’t do in 15 years. Yes in that we put the issue on the map. But, no, because…we’d only frozen it for one year.

Some leaders were worried that they would find themselves fighting exactly the same battle in a year’s time.

 

Others, such as Ramabina, over at the University of Cape Town, didn’t think it was much of a victory.

RAMABINA: It was a symbolic victory. …Okay, fine. Your 2015 fees and 2016 are going to be the same. But the main issue actually was the issue. People are not actually able to pay those fees, regardless of whether there is an increment or not.

HOST: And others still such as Anzio at Wits University simply refused to accept it was a victory in any way.

ANZIO: What does that help us? We’ve got this massive debt and you say there is no increment in 2016. But you’ll probably charge 20% in 2017 if we don’t address this issue, and so it just stayed.

HOST: For Ramabina the fact that the students couldn’t even decide on whether to call it a victory was exactly what the Government had hoped for.

RAMABINA: By the end of the week, it was so many factions and so many…it was all…you know, divide and rule even within the movement.

HOST: For many, Jacob Zuma’s concession proved that direct action worked. And that they should press harder.

They released an 18 point set of demands. They didn’t just want fees to fall, they wanted free education.

HOST: Over the ensuing months, fuelled by their initial triumph, the direct action team at Wits University, lead by Busisiwe and Anzio amongst others, decided to ramp up their militancy. This time to push for free education.

BUSISIWE: We didn’t want all students to be militant because that could turn into anarchy. Coz once everyone is militant, you can’t control who’s doing what, where they’re doing it and how they’re doing it.

HOST: The way they saw it, militant action required a sophisticated political approach, that made sure the right targets were hit.

BUSISIWE:The direct action team not only has the ideological understanding why the need for militancy but they have thoroughly gone through the strategy of what is that militancy and how that militancy advances the point we’re trying to get across.

HOST: The aim of direct action was to provoke the government into a violent response, that would show the government’s brutality.

HOST: In the closing months of 2015, students clashed repeatedly with police. As the battles escalated, the students became more adept in fighting back. They learnt to use balaclavas drenched with vinegar to counteract tear gas, they would use rubbish bin lids to protect themselves against rubber bullets, and cover their hands in condoms to stop stun grenades from burning them.

The day before the University returned from its Christmas break, students once again occupied the Senate House.

The Government was faced with a new year of unrest. Instead, they capitulated. They announced a commission to look at the idea of free education.

HOST: It wasn’t a total victory, but it was a step in the right direction. The academic year got under way, and things calmed down somewhat. The students – those who hadn’t been suspended for protesting – returned to their studies. Perhaps the government was at last listening.

HOST: Things settled down.

Then, nine months later, in mid-September 2016, the Minister for Education finally announced the plan for fees the following year.

I’ll give you one guess what he said.

Yep. The minister announced that fees would be allowed to rise by up to 8%.

To the students, it was like the Government had learnt nothing.

But this time, the students were ready. Just like the previous year, they jumped into action, occupying the main hall, and bringing with them all the stuff they needed for a confrontation. Vinegar, condoms, bin lids. The lot.

The police were also ready. They brought rubber bullets.

BUSISIWE: There’s a movie called 3000. It’s a Roman movie about Roman generals fighting. So one of the strategies we picked up from there, was they would shield themselves while the enemy was attacking them. But while they shield themselves, they advance and move forward slowly. And that’s what we did. So while the police were shooting at us, the dust bin covers … were there to protect us from the bullets. And even if they threw tear gas at us, the balaclavas with the vinegar would allow us to keep moving without choking. And even if they threw stun grenades at us, we were able to use the condoms on our hands and our feet so that the sparks from the stun grenades don’t burn us. So that’s what we did.

HOST: But whereas the previous year they’d learnt that direct action could achieve victories, this year, the lesson was different.

FASIHA: The reason why we were so successful in 2015 is that they didn’t know what to expect. This came out of nowhere. They were not ready. But if you use the same tactic every time. Of course they’re going to be ready.

HOST: The movement got so wrapped up in the tactics, they forgot to think about what they were trying to achieve out of this particular confrontation. And that vacuum was filled by chaos.

FASIHA: FeesMustFall in 2016 was very messy. We came on that year to police brutality.

HOST: This time the government refused to back down. And because the student’s tactics were the same, this time the Government were ready.

Remarkably, none of the student leaders I talked to regret it. They see the 2016 battle as part of a battle that’s been going on for decades.

Shortly before the battle, they met with some old student activists who’d fought against apartheid in the famous 1976 black student uprising in Soweto. Seeing themselves in the same light as their heroes from four decades before gave them enormous courage to continue the fight for free education.

INTERVIEWER: Do you in anyway regret having such an ambitious demand?

BUSISIWE: No. Not at all. It’s ambitious to those who don’t believe that there is money. It is not impossible for us who believe there is money and know exactly where that money is going to come from.

INTERVIEWER: So this is the domino?

BUSISIWE: Yes, this is the domino. … And I’m excited about that.

HOST: But that’ll only happen if they learn and adapt their tactics. Something, that at least some of them are aware of.

 

BUSISIWE: But at the moment, I’m more interested in a strategy shift.  We can’t be protesting the way we have in the past 2 years. It is unrealistic, and it puts too many people in the lie of fire and at harm than necessary.

HOST: The Fees Must Fall students forged their relationships on the battlefield, first as they were occupying the Administration Building at Cape Town University, and then when they were engaged in direct action at Wits. While they trusted each other in the heat of the moment, certain segments of students felt free to push the envelope further than others. This incoherence of approach then led down the path of focussing almost entirely on the specific tactics they were using.

The 2016 Fees Must Fall campaign was rebuffed by authorities because the students had spent so much time discussing how to fend off rubber bullets they’d forgotten to discuss why they were using that tactic anymore.

In the end, it’s almost like their goal was to become better at direct action, rather than being better at winning free education.

Next week, part two. It’s a very different story involving very different people from Brisbane, Australia. But like Fees Must Fall, it’s about a protest where direct action plays a key role, again, ignited by white hot anger. It’s an extraordinary tale. I hope you’ll join me.

HOST

Changemakers is hosted by me, Amanda Tattersall. Remember to subscribe to this podcast to catch all our episodes.

 

Changemakers is produced by Caroline Pegram and Catherine Freyne. Written by Charles Firth. Our researchers are Tessa Sparks, Iona Rennie and Amy Fairall. Our audio producers are Uncanny Valley and our sponsoring organisations are Mobilisation Lab.

Our sponsoring organisations are Australia for UNHCR, GetUp.org.au, the Fred Hollows Foundation, Sydney Democracy Network and the Organising Cities project funded by the Halloran Trust based at the University of Sydney.  

And for this episode thanks to the Gay and Lesbian Memory in Action space at Wits University.

Like us on Facebook at changemakers podcast and check out changemakerspodcast.org for transcripts and updates on all our stories.

 


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