Reporting on Emotions in South Africa

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From PRX and Transom, this is Sound School with the back story to great audio storytelling. I’m Rob Rosenthal. 

On the last episode, I spent a moment lamenting the pile of bad news for audio producers in 2025. In response, as a kind-of antidote, I said let’s kick off the new year on a positive note with a couple of inspiring interviews I had with young producers. 

I started with Anna Van Dine who took a chance on a documentary she made about a rural physician in Vermont. Instead of narrating the story herself, Anna asked the doctor to narrate. A creative choice. And highly unusual.

Anna - I think we could all experiment more. 

Music – (starts low) “This Machine” by 12 Dogs

On this episode of Sound School, my chat with Kabir Jugram (Jah-gram).
Kabir’s 23. Lives in Johannesburg. Has a degree in politics, philosophy, and economics. Plus an honors degree in Journalism. 

Kabir – And yeah. I don’t know what else to say about myself. I rap occasionally. For vibes. Yeah. (laughs). 

Music – Song up then down and under and out. 

What I find inspiring about Kabir is his willingness to wade into a thorny subject. One that was difficult to report on and difficult for him to even talk about. 

Kabir says men in South Africa have a problem. A big problem expressing emotions. Men are stoic. 

Kabir – Lots of people of color associate being stoic with surviving. 

Surviving economically. 

Kabir says unemployment among young people his age in South Africa is incredibly high. Some of the highest in the world. About 46 percent, according to the South African government. If you live in a township, an area designated for Black people during Apartheid, the unemployment rate is much higher. It’s a situation that leads men to stifle their feelings.  

Kabir - It just kind of leaves no room for what is happening with me right now. And, that’s compounded by the fact that mental health has never been seen as a real thing. It's kind of just been a way to say, “Nah, you're being weak.” 

This true for Kabir, too. He’s guarded. 

Kabir – Yeah. That is my reality. 

And his friends’ reality, as well. Especially, a close friend named Shacky. 

Clip – Shacky - So my name, government name, Michak Davis Peary. But a lot of my friends call me Shacky. Yeah, I'm twenty six. What else can I say about myself? 

Kabir - That's my boy Shacky. Like me, he was raised in the madness of Josie. And he talks a lot. Like low key, like he's afraid of silence. Shacky's a born hustler and at the moment he's making his money as an Uber driver. He lives just northeast of the city center in a suburb called Orange Grove. And he stays there in the house with his three brothers and their two dogs. 

Speaker 3 [00:04:20] Oh okay. So this is Mulan…. (fades down and under)

It was Shacky’s mental health crisis – a moment when he considered dying by suicide -- that led Kabir to produce this documentary about men and mental health in South Africa. As a heads up, we’ll hear the details of Shacky’s struggles shortly. 

The documentary is called “Nothing Wrong, Bro.” 

Clip – Kabir - He says that when he was a kid, his parents were busy all of the time, so he was basically raised by the TV. 

Shacky - So I can say that yeah, that with the movies and all of that, that influenced me greatly in terms of like what a family is supposed to be like. 

Kabir - But the reality was very different. Shacky's parents were not like those parents in the movies. 

Shacky - I remember the first time I said I love you to my parents, they were shocked bro. Like they didn't know what to do, bro. They were like, Whoa They looked at me, they looked at each other and then they they kinda laughed, you know? And then it was like an embarrassed thing where they were like, “Yeah, just go to your room bro, you know?” And then later my mom called me, it's like, don't worry about it, like we love you too. 

“Nothing Wrong, Bro” is Kabir’s first-ever radio documentary. He produced it for a podcast called Radio Workshop that reports on “Young Africa. One Story At a Time,” as they put it. And for full disclosure, for several years I was a consultant for the podcast. 

Radio Workshop’s mission is to work with young reporters. Show them the ropes. How to record in the field. How to interview. How to write and narrate. 

I’ll just mention right here, Kabir’s narration sounds effortless. He’s clear. Conversational. Feeling what he’s saying. He’s very surehanded. Which means the writing is spot on. Even though it took a looong time. 

Kabir – Absolutely! Like yo! I would just put it down “Oh I hate how this is written” or like “God damn it, I have so many edits that I have to make” so like I'm there like “Shit, I suck at this,” you know… 

Who hasn’t been there. And by the way, it wasn’t easy for him to tell me that. 

Kabir – Even like saying what I just said now, I was like kinda squirming. “Oh my god. People are going to hear me say that.” 

Radio Workshop also helped him discover the power of audio storytelling. 

Kabir - Yeah, like men just like to talk shit on a mic and call it a podcast. And I thought that's what podcasting was. But then I did this and I'm like, oh, it's like it can be cinematic, it can be like documentary, it's like audio film.

Back in high school, Kabir wrote raps for a hip hop group called 12 Dogs – and, he still does.  

Shacky wasn’t a member of the group back then. But he showed up one night and hung out. That’s how they met. 

Clip – Kabir - While I sat in a corner writing a verse, he was outside the cottage with a bunch of the gents. He was passing a joint one way, he bit a fat chunk out of a mango, and he passed it the other way. And I was there thinking, what is this gent even doing here? 

Then he stepped to the mic with mango juice stains on his hand. Suddenly, these sweet, sentimental type of words started flowing from him. And somehow they just fit perfectly with the kind of music we made. And he low-key agreed. 

Shacky - I was like, yo! Yo! Yo!. You know, finally there's some people who are doing music out there, you know, who are on that level that I'm like, yeah, you see, now, now I can work with someone, you know, now we can make something beautiful, you know.

From that night on, Shacky was in and the 12 Dogs crew grew close. “All of us gents were like brothers,” as Kabir put it in the documentary. 

They spent a lot of time together sitting on the stoop smokin’ weed, and telling stories and looking out at the Johannesburg skyline. 

Clip – Kabir - Then one day, I woke up to a flood of messages on the group chat. Everyone's talking about Shacky. Something about an Instagram story. I opened my IG, and I can't believe this shit. Shacky is talking shit about us, saying something like we aren't good friends to him. We tried to hit him up, but he refused to take our calls. And so we figured, alright, it's calm, or we'll let him do his thing. He was done with us, I guess, done with his old way of living. 

He was completely MIA for about a year. And then he calls on a random Thursday. I'm with the boys and we're loitering outside this depressingly empty bar. And we're trying to laugh at how badly we bombed at this open mic night. Shacky first calls our friend Lucas from an unknown number. But the call doesn't last long. And when Lucas comes back, he's shook. He tells us that Shecky's sitting in Gama park and he wants to take his life. 

So we jump in the car and boy, I fly down the M1. We don't care about no speeding fans at this point because Shacky's the only thing on our minds. Simone's there in the passenger seat saying some bullshit to me, but I cannot hear him. I'm just there speeding, hoping that I get to Shacky in time. 

When we arrive at the park, we find him sitting in his car in the darkness. He's holding his head in his left hand and his phone in the right. His mom's on speaker quoting Bible verses to him. Something about resisting the devil's invite. But he just sits there, motionless and unresponsive to her preachings. 

Shacky - It was the first time like she experienced me in a mess. Cause she was always like, Yeah, this guy is is the guy who's numb. Literally, you know, is the guy who doesn't give a shit. Like, 'cause she was even like, Bro, if you break down, then you understand like your bros are gone, bro. You know? And she was more worried about like, yo, bro, you have to stand up. 

Kabir - Shacki's mom hung up when we told her we were there. We sat with him for almost an hour and we basically said nothing. Because sometimes there's just nothing you can say. Nothing about the year gone by or how we got there. And when Shecky finally spoke, he said, Yo, I almost let the devil in. I saw Shecky cry for the first time that night. And I saw him. Like, really saw him.

After that hour in the car with Shacky, everyone one went back to their hangout. As always, they smoked weed and watched the city lights. 

What they didn’t do was talk about what just happened. How did Shacky get to this dark place? Why did he disappear for a year? How can the crew help him? Kabir told me they didn’t talk about any of that. 

Kabir - It actually blows my mind sometimes because… it's kind of gaslighting… Did this thing like just not happen?... Like am I making it deeper in my head than it actually is? Because it happens like all the time. 

Like I've heard gents talk about like stories where like, “Yo, dog, I saw this gent get shot the other day,” and then it the very next sentence is just like “But anyways, dog, what you want to eat?”… and then like just talk about something else. And it's like, dude, how the fuck did you just move on from that? That’s crazy! 

It stayed that way. No one said anything about Shacky’s mental health -- for two months. Until Kabir sat down with Shacky in a studio to talk frankly for the very first time.

Consider the irony of this moment. Two friends who need to get real on tape but neither of them have a lot of practice doing so. And, they’re having this conversation for a story about the trouble men having conversations about feelings. It’s ironic and meta. 

Rob – Was there anything you did to, for a lack of a better way of saying it, was there anything you did to psych yourself up?

Kabir – Um, to be honest… I do get really socially anxious sometimes. You know, it's only human. But… I guess I don't have a way of psyching myself up besides, “You know what? I'm just gonna go. I'm just gonna like drive to the place where this interview's happening. Pick up Shacky and we're gonna do this no matter how I feel. You know, it's just for me it's just pushing. I guess I'm really good at pushing past my emotions sometimes. Well, hey, that's maybe the silver lining. (laughs)

But yeah… I kinda tell myself you have to do this. You know, like there's a reason you're doing this, there's a reason you wanted to do this. How you feel in this moment is not as big as those reasons. So shut up and do it. 

Doing it meant Kabir needed share from time to time in the interview what he was feeling about Shacky. His editor coached him to do that.  She told him you need to open up to your friend.  Otherwise, the story will be thin. 

Kabir - So she was telling me like you gotta dig deeper, you gotta actually be honest about yourself as well, because it's gonna make the piece better, but also it's only fair to Shacky… 

Like it's not just, okay, I'm gonna keep bombarding you with questions and what about this, what about this, what about this? But you know, relating to a person makes it a lot easier for them to be like, Okay, cool, this person's not just objectifying me for a story, but this is a, you know, a meaningful conversation we're having. So I think resonating and relating to things goes a long way in terms of getting people to be actually feel comfortable to open up about stuff

Clip – Kabir - So I finally asked Shecky, Dog, what really happened that night? 

Shacky – (fades in)  You know, then I drove up the hill. You check where to Digama. And that's when like everything just started pouring and no rain was pouring. (fades out)

Kabir - Here's what he told me. You know, in that whole year where Shecky was ghost, his life got really tough. He had to get real serious about making money. And he felt that he could only do that alone. No distractions, no time to kick it with the homies, no making music. For him, hustling looked like the only solution to his problems. 

He started a solar panel business with a friend, and for a while, business was booming. Shacky and his brothers even moved into a new house and they were living that high life. They were even eating takeout now. Even the parents were eating because they could rent out the old family home. And for the first time in years, it seemed like Shacky's sacrifices were paying off. But just six months in, it all came crashing down. The business tanked, and Shecky says he didn't like who he was becoming. 

Shacky - I feel like I was becoming a person that I didn't want, a person that I literally swore down to never be like. And that's when everything dawned on me, bro. I was like, yo, I'm I'm literally being this guy. 

Kabir - The kind of guy who borrows money and never pays it back, the kind who lies, not just to others, but to himself. Anything to avoid going back to the bottom. But that's exactly where he went. 

He moved back into his parents' house and it was a mess. There was no electricity. The city threatened to cut the water. Shakey's parents were massively behind on mortgage payments. 

And then the bank came calling. They were gonna take the house. 

Shacky - That was my first ever like mental breakdown, like heavy where now I was like, yo shaggy bro, you tried your best now, but here it's bigger than you, boy. It's bigger than me. I feel like when you're in that state, you understand like that mindset, you know, like you can't you in control, but your emotions are just so heavy, bro, that all you can see is like the blurred darkness. (music fades out) 

In the story, Kabir says Shacky has changed. He’s no longer the trash-talking hustler he once was. And, he’s more willing to talk candidly. 
Shacky says making music helps. He says he “slows it down” and let’s his emotions out through the lyrics. 

On top of that, Kabir and Shacky are more present in each other’s lives.  They check in at least once a week. It’s become a ritual. 

We learn all that in the documentary and then Shacky turns the tables. Shacky asked Kabir about his struggles with mental health. 

Clip – Kabir (in tape) - You know, it's funny, because I get depressed like a lot (laughs) I think most of my days of the week, I'm depressed for some reason. I don't understand why. 

Shacky - Dash in, dash out. 

Kabir - Yeah, exactly. You know, it's like uncontrollable to me. But it's like I don't know, like now with all these conversations that happen and the fact that, you know, we actually now it's like that space has always been there, but now I realize that space is there. And it's kinda like I'm okay and I'm not it's not so scary living with the fact that I'm always depressed. 'Cause actually now it's not something wrong with me. 

Shacky - There’s nothing wrong, bro. 

Kabir (narrating) - There's nothing wrong, bro. Nothing to be ashamed of. I didn't even know that I needed to hear that. See, I was raised to believe that silence makes you strong, but there's so much freedom in being real.

This is what I find so inspiring about Kabir and the documentary and why I wanted you to hear it. I was taken by how skillfully he navigated a story fraught with emotion – I mean, it was all about emotion. 

Rob - There's one thing I want to tell you that here in the United States there's a reporter named Alix Spiegel. She used to work for the big public radio network in the United States, National Public Radio, NPR. And she reported on psychology and mental health. And she used to call herself “the emotions reporter.” Like her beat was emotions. And it seems to me, while you reported the facts of the story about Shacky, you were also an emotions reporter. Does that sound accurate to you? 

Kabir -  That feels really great. Yes, I love that. Cause I think that's what interests me about journalism more than anything else. Uh… I get to like learn more about humanity and learn more about what makes people people. You know, so hearing that I'm like an emotions type of reporter, I'm like that's exactly what I want to be. So yay! Thank you for saying that. (laughs)

Kabir’s working on a new story for Radio Workshop. The closing of a steel mill in Newcastle, South Africa, the town where his family is from. 

If you’re struggling with depression and your mental health, there is always help. For support in the U.S. dial 988. In South Africa, connect with the South African Depression and Anxiety Group. Their number for help is 0800 567 567. 

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Here’s something I know about you. You’ve considered attending an artist’s residency. You know, a dedicated period of time in a lovely place to focus on creative work – your creative work. 

Avery Thompson – a radio producer and a poet – he says he’s found residencies to be incredibly valuable. He’s sharing what he’s learned about them along with advice about how to land one in an article at Transom called “The Art of the Residency: What Audio Artists Need to Know about These Creative Sanctuaries.” It’s up right now at Transom dot org. 

And, speaking of residencies, for a second year, Transom is sponsoring a residency at the Blue Mountain Center. A month of undistracted time, quiet, good food, and the beautiful Adirondack Mountains of New York. And, it’s free.  

See? Sounds dreamy, right? 

But, ya gotta hurry. Applications close February 1st. Find all the deets at Transom dot org. 

Genevieve Sponsler, Jay Allison, and Jennifer Jerrett always give me a hand with Sound School which is brought to you by PRX and Transom. 

I’m Rob Rosenthal. Thanks for listening. 
  
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