Today on the podcast I’m talking with Dr Nechama Brodie.

Nechama has worked as a multi-media journalist, editor, producer and publisher for nearly twenty-five years. During this time she has dodged the secret police in Burma, explored tunnels underneath Johannesburg, gotten dusty at rock festivals, and reported on the myth of ‘white genocide’ in South Africa. Nechama’s journalistic work has appeared in leading South African newspapers like the Sunday Times, the Mail & Guardian, and City Press, and in the Hindustan Times (India) and the Guardian (UK). Nechama also previously headed up the training and research division TRI Facts for independent fact-checking agency Africa Check.

Nechama has a PhD in journalism and is a part-time lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand’s School of Journalism and Media Studies. Her research work focuses on interpersonal violence and media representations of violence. Nechama is also a musician and singer and (unrelated) a martial artist, holding a second dan in karate.

In addition to her journalism Nechama is the author of several books - The Joburg Book (Pan Macmillan), a contemporary history of the city that was long-listed for the Alan Paton Award and has sold over 10 000 copies; and Inside Joburg (Pan Macmillan), a guide to the city’s most interesting spaces. Nechama’s best-selling history of the city of Cape Town, The Cape Town Book (Struik Travel and Heritage), was released in 2015.

Nechama is also the co-author of memoirs I Ran For My Life (Pan Macmillan), with best-selling musician Kabelo Mabalane, and Rule of Law (Pan Macmillan), with MP and former state prosecutor Glynnis Breytenbach.

Nechama’s first novel – a supernatural thriller called Knucklebone (Pan Macmillan) – was published in 2018 and was long-listed for the Barry Ronge Prize for South African fiction and short-listed for the Nommo Award for African speculative fiction.

In 2020, Nechama published two further books - The sequel to Knucklebone, Three Bodies (Macmillan) in March, and her non-fiction work Femicide in South Africa (Kwela) in July 2020. In the Introduction to Femicide she says

“Femicide – like the murders of children, and perhaps the elderly – carries such distinct features that, if we were to try and understand or profile these killings only in the context of male homicides, we would miss the point entirely. The violence meted out against women has long been distinct from the violence meted out between men” and goes on to say later in the book “most violent injuries between men arise from ‘everyday life, most often involving strangers and including poorly defined arguments and quarrels over money, women and drunkenness’ whereas most women are attacked and harmed by someone they know. Where men often participate in or even initiate violence against each other, even when they are with strangers, women are subjected to violence, and mostly by the people close to them.”

So, today I’ll be talking to Nechama about femicide, how to tell fact from fiction, and her writing life.

S5: E8 - Lauren Beukes - Parenting across the multiverses

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