What does it mean to make a photograph that holds more than a moment?In this episode of Listen to Your Footsteps, Kojo Baffoe sits down with Soweto-born documentary and commercial photographer, photographic artist and printmaker Andile Bhala. Their conversation moves through memory, music, football, bicycles, fatherhood, creative process and the responsibility of documenting the places and people that shape us.Andile reflects on growing up in a lively four-room home in Orlando West, Soweto, where stories, music and a constant flow of people taught him how to observe. He shares how a football dream gave way to photography; how cycling became a vehicle for community, discovery and visual storytelling; and why the best camera is often simply the one in your hand.They also explore Andile’s belief that “paper remembers more”, the delicate line between commercial work and documentary truth, and his ongoing project on names, identity and generational legacy. Most powerfully, this is a conversation about seeing Johannesburg honestly: its beauty, its decay, its noise, its contradictions and the hope it must continue to offer those who arrive looking for a future.If you care about South African photography, Soweto stories, visual culture, Johannesburg, African creativity, documentary practice and the art of paying attention, this episode is for you.Listen, follow and share this episode with someone who believes that a photograph can preserve what a city might otherwise forget.#ListenToYourFootsteps #AndileBhala #SowetoPhotography #DocumentaryPhotography #SouthAfricanArt #Johannesburg #JoziStories #AfricanCreatives #VisualStorytelling #Printmaking #PhotographyPodcast #AfricanCulture

We're looking back on some of our favorite moments from past episodes. The ones that made us pause, reflect, and feel something. In this highlight reel, Zoë Modiga opens up about humanising her father, the beautiful memory of stealing her grandfather's pens, the childhood dentist visit that almost became a career, trusting intuition as a creative compass, why she'll always be an "album artist," and what really brings her joy.A reflective, heartfelt episode on family, creativity, and staying true to yourself.#ListenToYourFootsteps #ZoeModiga #PodcastHighlights #MemorableMoments #Storytelling #Intuition #CreativeProcess #AlbumArtist #Fatherhood #SouthAfricanMusic #PodcastClips #ReflectionMoments

Simmi Areff wants one thing on the record first: he is a comedian. The podcast pioneer, the group head of audio and video, the man who produces Trevor Noah's podcast, all of it comes after the microphone.In episode 140, Kojo Baffoe speaks to the comedian and podcaster who built South African podcasting before most people could define the word. From Ike's Bookshop in Durban and a father deeply entrenched in the ANC, through three degrees and a decade of radio programme managers who refused to put him on air, to the corridor in Montreal that changed everything.We get into what actually makes someone a storyteller, why great audio forgives bad video, and why 80 listeners once generated 500 million rand. Then it goes quieter: losing his father in September, hearing him in the wind, and the safety net that lets him say no to anyone, a roof over his head and a hot plate of food. He is certain his moment has not arrived yet. He thinks it will arrive in London.Follow the show, leave a review and share this with one person who needs it.#ListenToYourFootsteps #KojoBaffoe #SimmiAreff #SouthAfricanPodcast #PodcastingInAfrica #AfricanStorytelling #StandUpComedySA #CreativeCareers #GriefAndHealing #PodcastIndustry

In this Memorable Moments clip from Listen To Your Footsteps, RJ Benjamin shares how Trevor Noah once came to him for vocal coaching long before global fame — a connection that later led to RJ collaborating with comedian Kagiso Lediga on a Netflix comedy-musical. He also reveals the deeply personal truth behind one of his most loved songs, originally written about his father before industry pressure reshaped its story. From childhood bath-time sing-alongs to discovering his daughter's perfect pitch, RJ reflects on talent, legacy, and staying open to unexpected creative paths.🎧 Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.

What does it take to turn curiosity into culture, and culture into a lasting legacy?In Episode 139 of Listen to Your Footsteps, Kojo Baffoe sits down with Osmic Menoe - South African hip-hop pioneer, cultural organiser and creative entrepreneur - for a candid conversation about growing up in deep Soweto and building a life through hip-hop.Osmic reflects on childhood astronomy, long school journeys that began before dawn, and the power of finding a purpose when the world around you offers too many destructive distractions. He traces his path through graffiti, b-boying, beatboxing, rap, design, mixtapes, early creative enterprise and the grassroots cyphers that helped give Johannesburg’s young hip-hop community a voice.This is a conversation about South African hip-hop history, street culture, youth identity, creative discipline, entrepreneurship and what it truly means to build cultural architecture from the ground up.If you are an artist, entrepreneur, culture-maker or anyone trying to create a meaningful path beyond the spaces you were given, this episode is for you.Subscribe to Listen to Your Footsteps, share this episode with someone building their own platform, and join the conversation in the comments.#OsmicMenoe #SouthAfricanHipHop #Soweto #Johannesburg #HipHopCulture #StreetCulture #CreativeEntrepreneurship #AfricanCulture #ListenToYourFootsteps

Memorable moments from the conversation with Taryn Gill. From leaving a conventional career to creating a business rooted in African beauty, instinct and community, Taryn shares what it really feels like to step into the unknown. It is terrifying, thrilling—and sometimes both at once.Her reminder is simple: courage is not the absence of fear. It is doing the work despite it. And when doubt arrives, carry the evidence of everything remarkable you have already done.Listen to the full episode of Listen to Your Footsteps for the complete conversation with Taryn Gill.

Dr. Lesley Mofokeng - academic, journalist, and author - sits down with Kojo Baffoe to trace a life built on curiosity. From dreaming of being a bus driver in a dusty village outside Mafikeng, to breaking into the Sunday Times newsroom in the mid-90s, to writing bestselling books on Khanyi Mbau and Somizi, Lesley's path eventually turned inward — toward his own grandfather, a Dutch Reformed Church minister whose name had vanished from history.This conversation moves through migrant childhoods, the discipline of court reporting, the politics of appearance in newsrooms, and a master's research journey that took Lesley to the tomb of King Moshoeshoe at Thaba Bosiu. It widens into a bigger reckoning: how colonial narratives buried African intellectual history, why "oral culture" was a label designed to diminish, and why Lesley now spends his days restoring erased names - his grandfather's, Sol Plaatje's, and an entire lost chapter of Black South African history around the Boer War.If you care about journalism, memory, language, and legacy, this one stays with you.🎧 Listen now and subscribe for more conversations with Africans reshaping business, art, media, and culture.#AfricanHistory #Journalism #Podcast #ListenToYourFootsteps #SouthAfricanHistory #OralHistory #BlackHistory #Storytelling #PhD #Academia #Mafikeng #Sesotho #Setswana #KingMoshoeshoe #SolPlaatje

A Memorable Moments highlight from my conversation with artist and storyteller Tsoku Maela, on using lived experience, photography and self-portraiture to make sense of mental health, identity and empathy.#LTYFMoments #ListenToYourFootsteps #TsokuMaela #MentalHealth #AfricanArt #SouthAfricanPhotography #SelfPortraiture #Storytelling

What does it mean to live a tapas life, to sample widely, to commit deeply, to keep becoming? Danielle Bowler has spent her life refusing neat labels, and in this conversation, she makes a powerful case for why she never needed one.Writer, culture editor, researcher, musician, and now opera composer, Danielle joins Kojo Baffoe for a deeply personal conversation that moves from Ifafa Beach on KwaZulu-Natal’s south coast - her spiritual home - to the lecture halls of Rhodes University, the editorial spaces of Elle South Africa and EWN, the stages of the National Arts Festival, and ultimately into thedemanding, expansive world of opera.She speaks candidly about retrenchment, reinvention, and the strange pressure of trying to answer life’s biggest questions in Johannesburg, a city that can both sharpen and scatter you. There’s also a powerful moment in the making of her opera, when writing the final lines brought her to tears because the characters had grown beyond the page and into something fully alive.Together, they explore the myth of the jack-of-all-trades, the actual weight of that old saying, the beauty and brutality of building a life in Joburg as an outsider, the role of Twitter-era community, Black feminist thought, and why Danielle believes opera may be the only form vast enough to hold all of who she is.This one is for anyone who has ever been told they do too much — and is finally learning that maybe they’re simply whole.🎧 Listen now. Leave a review. Share it with someone still trying to find their thread.#ListenToYourFootsteps #DanielleBowler #KojoBaffoe#AfricanPodcast #BlackCreatives #SouthAfricanPodcast #Opera #BlackFeministThought #CreativeCareer #Joburg #MultihyphenateLife #PurposeDriven #AfricanWomen #CultureEditor #MusicAndCulture #Storytelling#KwaZuluNatal #PortfolioLife #GeneralistLife

This first LTYF Moments episode pulls a powerful excerpt from my conversation with ballerina and broadcaster Kitty Phetla, exploring discipline, pain and poise in the pursuit of mastering a craft. LTYF Moments is a new weekly Memorable Moments series, sharing focused highlights from longer Listen To Your Footsteps episodes.