WOMAN ZONE STORIES

More than just a search for her own real identity, Unathi Kapa’s thought-provoking, self-published memoir will throw light for many on what it’s like growing up not knowing who ‘your people’ are.

When Dr Beryl Botman's husband, Professor Russell Botman died in 2014, she write through her grief in a book called With(out)You. At the launch of her second book Still Love Remains, she spoke to Beryl Eichenberger about her writing journey.

She's a writer, a poet, a teacher and academic, but it's as an editor that Helen Moffett has made an extraordinary and extensive mark in literary circles working on more writers manuscripts than most of us have had hot dinners. Listen here as she shares her secrets.

Members of WEAVE, the Women’s Education and Voice Expression collective founded 26 years ago, got together for a reunion to talk about their journeys, individually and as a group, and about their ‘herstorical’ publication ink@boilingpoint: a selection of 21st century black women’s writing from the southern tip of Africa. Listen here to share the inspiration.

How Classification Became Culture is the sub-title of Tessa and Lynsey's book Coloured (Jonathan Ball). It asks many questions, amongst them What does it mean to be Coloured? It also provides many thought-provoking answers. In conversation with writer Nadia Kamies they shared just some of the thinking behind the book.

Award winning author of The Veil of Maya, doctor/writer Chantal Stewart shares the back story to her writing and her debut novel with Beryl Eichenberger .

A book that was a long time in the making, The Sex Lives of African Women is about so many more things than sex - like culture, religion, patriarchy, abuse - to name a few. It's also about self-discovery, freedom and healing. Author Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah shares the inside stories of over 30 women

At 93, Paarl-born Margaret Newman's brain is as fresh as a daisy. Here she shares her secret and gives a glimpse into a life well-lived despite the challenges that only South Africa could offer.

The Woman Zone Book Club guest author of the month during the Artscape Women's Humanity Festival, was Karen Lazar author of 'W is for Witness'. Following a stroke, Karen is also disabled. She shares thoughts on that and on writing with Beryl Eichenberger...

An installation in the Marble Foyer at Artscape as part of the Women's Humanity Festival, contains uncomfortable statistics. It's called She Had a Name 365 - performance artist Carin Bester explains...

Every year as part of the Artscape Women's Humanity Festival, Fine Music Radio give Woman Zone an hour of airtime to showcase some of the women featured in the Festival. Presented by Theresa Smith and produced by Beryl Eichenberger, this year guests included: Marlene le Roux CEO of Artscape, Fatima Dike playwright, Acting Judge Rehana Parker, Hayley Philander founder of IseeU mentoring programme and poet Lebo Diverse. Listen here!

Knit & Natter is a Woman Zone 'Everywoman' project. And on Sunday August 6th, as part of the Artscape Women's Humanity Festival it sure attracted a lot of women...listen in here!

The first black woman in South Africa to have had a play published and performed, there is much to celebrate about Fatima Dike. At 75, she is one of the Artscape Women's Humanity Festival icons, hear her as she shares just some of her story.

In her book, Off-Centre and Out of Focus (Fourthwall Books) Nadia Kamies reflects on what it was like Growing up 'Coloured' in South Africa, primarily through photography. She spoke to Theresa Smith at the Woman Zone Book Club.

Writing Searching for Papa’s Secrets in Hitler’s Berlin took its toll on author Egonne Roth. It uncovered for her how her father’s experiences shaped her life – but ultimately it also helped her find her own identity. She talks here to Beryl Eichenberger.

There is so much to be learned from this book. Not just how Louisa Zondo, lawyer and political actvist, coped with the suicide of her second born son, MaRiky, but what it means to reflect back on your life, your loves, your family, work, pain, parenting and healing. It begins with the expedition Louisa undertook to Mount Everest Base Camp soon after Riky died - it ends in hope, and her resolve to continue his legacy.

She was described as 'a woman who couldn't be conventional if she tried', and Noni Jabavu (1919-2008) writer was certainly original. Born in SA and educated in the UK from the age of 13 she was also 'a woman of two worlds'. Amongst other things she wrote two books of memoir, but in 1977, she penned a series of columns for the Daily Dispatch. These have been co-ordinated and compiled into a book called A Stranger at Home (Tafelberg) by Makhosazana Xaba and Athambile Masola. Cape Town based Athambile shares the story.

The Cape Cultural Collective cover a number of performing arts, but poetry holds a special place. Three of the fifteen poets whose work is included in their second anthology, Beyond Truth's Edge, joined us at the Women's Library to share their words and their stories of becoming poets. They were Zenariah Barends, Afeea Omar and Diana Ferrus and you can listen to what they had to say right here...

As a proudly Xhosa woman herself, in helping to put together The Rainbow Nation Cookery Guide, TV celebrity cook Pumla Brook Thomae stretched her own knowledge range of other cultures kitchens enormously. The book was an initiative of The Rotary e-club of Greater Cape Town, but here project manager Pumla gives us the inside story.

The Cape Cultural Collective cover a number of performing arts, but poetry has a special place. Three of the fifteen poets whose work is included in their second anthology, Beyond Truth's Edge, joined us at our Women's Library at Artscape to share their words and stories about becoming poets. They were Zenariah Barends, Afeea Omar and Diana Ferrus - and you can listen to what they had to say, right here...

What began as an ’accidental’ group therapy session with a bunch of male students nearly 25 years ago turned, first into intense study of the mental health of men and boys, and finally into the book: Masculinity meets Humanity: An Adapted Model of Masculinised Psychotherapy (UNISA). Author and compassionate clinical psychologist, Shahieda Jansen shares the journey and just some of what she has learned along the way.

In culinary circles Prue Leith - caterer, restaurateur, food guru and visionary - needs no introduction, but her memoir reveals her to be so much more. On a recent visit to South Africa to coincide with the relaunch of the memoir, I'll Try Anything Once, as well as the launch of Bliss on Toast, her latest cook book, she spoke to Nancy Richards for the Woman Zone Finding Herself series. 

Said to be one of the busiest women in Cape Town, Janet Pillai, founder & CEO of MLT Car Hire & Tours, amongst other things, has more recently gone 'jetsetting' - listen here as she describes her journey, and herself. 

Her strong, assertive radio voice with it's undertone of humour,  belies the tough passage Sara-Jayne Makwala King has had in life. Like her first book, Killing Karoline, her second book Mad Bad Love (mf books), pulls no punches on the trauma she's had to work through. In this case, discovering that the things we love can nearly kill us. She speaks here to journalist Theresa Smith

Tragedy struck when Noel English, 45yr old father of two from Mitchell's Plain, died of COVID 19 in January 2021. A phoenix from the ashes however, was the book I Miss Daddy written by his son Matthew and wife Alicia. Despite her crushing grief, it also prompted Alicia to launch an initiative called The Olive Exchange - listen here to find out more... 

It's been a while coming, but Margie Orford's new book The Eye of the Beholder (Jonathan Ball) is strong stuff. In his cover shout, bestseller crime writer Ian Rankin calls it 'As powerful as it is elegant - grips like a vice.' He's not wrong. But Margie has many tales to tell about her journey with this title, and as a writer in general.  

London based writer Louisa Treger was in South Africa recently to launch her latest book, Madwoman (Bloomsbury). It tells the extraordinary, and shocking, story of American journalist, Nelly Bly who back in the late 1880's had herself admitted to a New York asylum for 'mad women' - so she could both write about it and expose the appalling conditions. At our Women's Library, Louisa was in conversation with writer- publisher Karina Szczurek.

Twenty-one years ago, Karen Lazar, academic and language lecturer suffered a stroke that left her paralyzed down one side and disabled. It doesn't define her, but has impacted her life dramatically. A champion of gender and disability, in her books Hemisphere - Inside a stroke and Echoes an anthology she describes how. (Intro song, Beautiful Woman is by Tina Schouw)