Peter (Host): One of the invisible ideas that shapes most people’s lives in the US, one of the topics that never gets old here at Outside, is the idea that going outside—whatever that means to you—is a choice.
It’s not the same choice for everyone—going outside might mean going into the forest, or a desert, or even swampland, depending on where you live. Just like the word “adventure” can mean everything from wingsuiting to a wildflower hike, “the outdoors” can be a lot of different places.
But something that we perhaps take for granted, is the idea that if we decide to go outside, we can. The mountains, the rivers, the ocean–they’re waiting for us. They’ll be there when it works in our schedule. The main barrier to the outdoors is our ability to prioritize being there.
But that’s not the case for everyone, and sometimes, that’s not the case for an entire people. Sometimes, the obstacles between you and whatever you identify as nature, includes generational trauma, or a whole country still trying to heal.
Today we’re bringing you the first episode of Back to the Water, a new series that explores South Africa’s complicated relationship with its coastline and how that affects South African’s complicated relationship with each other. It recently won best independent non-fiction podcast at Tribeca Film Festival. It’s hosted by Oscar winning documentary film maker Pippa Ehrlich, and singer Zolani Mahola. They’ll take it from here.
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:00:01] A quick note, in this podcast, we call individuals who are of diverse, multiracial ethnicities living in South Africa, “Colored” people. Also, we don’t shy away from difficult topics like race, sexual abuse, and generational trauma. Take care as you listen on with a show.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:00:26] The tip of Africa has some of the most diverse marine life on our planet.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:00:35] It’s where great white sharks swim with African penguins…
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:00:38] And southern right whales come to breed.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:00:45] Here, the Indian, Southern and Atlantic oceans meet. And two close friends try to figure out a riddle.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:00:52] Okay, so we’re at a very, very special little piece of kelp forest in Cape Point Nature Reserve.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:01:00] I’m Pippa Ehrlich, friend one.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:01:02] Um, and we’re here with my wonderful friend, Zolani.
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:01:06] I thought you were going to say my wife.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:01:07] Oh, hahahaha.
[laughter]
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:01:08] And I am Zolani Mahola, friend two.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:01:12] There’s a chance you’ve previously encountered our work. Remember that famous song from the 2010 Football World Cup? Waka Waka? Zolani co-wrote it.
Song “Waka Waka” plays: [00:01:22] …It’s time for Africa.
2021 Footage of the Academy Awards: [00:01:30] And the Oscar goes to…
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:01:33] And Pippa co-directed My Octopus Teacher,
2021 Footage of the Academy Awards: [00:01:35] My Octopus Teacher.
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:01:37] which is the only South African documentary film that, as of 2023 at least, has won an Oscar.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:01:43] We’re here because we have a question. Not only is South Africa biodiverse, but it’s also the fifth most culturally and racially varied country on Earth.
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:01:54] Pippa and I want to know if all of this is one big coincidence, or if this vast human diversity is somehow linked to these oceans in front of us. To find our answers, we start with the kelp forest.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:02:10] Before we jump in…
Zolani Mahola [00:02:11] These are a gift to the sea.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:02:14] We clutch silver coins and tobacco snuff.
Zolani Mahola [00:02:16] Usually it’s to ask the ancestors to intercede in your life.
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:02:29] I am from the Xhosa tribe. We are black South Africans. We speak isiXhosa, which is the language of my ancestors.
Zolani Mahola [00:02:39] …Zolani prays in isiXhosa…
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:02:42] And I recite the lineage of my paternal and maternal clans.
Zolani Mahola [00:02:46] …Zolani continues praying in isiXhosa.
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:02:54] We toss our offerings in the water, pull on our goggles, and carefully step over rocks and waves before diving in.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:03:03] The cold hits our bodies and we crawl through piles and piles of brown sea vegetables.
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:03:08] The sea forest is full of kelp. They look and feel like streamers or pompoms. When a wave passes, the kelp moves together in one big sigh, a slow motion cheer.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:03:23] We take a deep breath. And start climbing down, down, down towards the ocean floor.
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:03:36] As our senses adjust to the underwater world, they pick up clues of what lives here.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:03:42] There are pops of bright color. Electric blues, reds and purples of prickly urchins, sea stars and an anemones.
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:03:49] Then there are clicking sounds.
[underwater clicking sounds]
Loyiso Dunga [00:03:52] It’s actually, the kelp are breathing. It makes… it blows these bubbles.
Zolani Mahola [00:03:57] It’s a chorus of the kelp and the water, and it’s rolling so beautifully.
Shamier Magmoet [00:04:03] Explosions of color and sounds even.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:04:07] It’s just this totally three dimensional environment that you can fly through.
Nasreen Peer [00:04:12] Anything can move vertically in a kelp forest. It’s a very powerful metaphor for life.
Zolani Mahola [00:04:19] It’s gorgeous.
Zolani Mahola [00:04:22] Then, just as we adjust to the cold, to the multitudes of living things that are everywhere, it’s time to breathe. We turn our heads upwards and pushing the kelp aside. We swim to the surface.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:04:42] I’m a white South African of Eastern European and English descent. I grew up in Johannesburg, which is hours away from any ocean, and although Zolani was born near the coast, due to Apartheid, she only visited the water a couple of days a year. For many South Africans, the ocean is associated with separation and pain. A place where some people belong…
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:05:09] And some don’t. Even now, Pippa and I are still navigating what healing looks like here and what environments are truly ours.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:05:19] That’s what we’re here to figure out. How are South Africans finding belonging by reconnecting with the oceans and the untold stories of South Africa?
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:05:28] And is this quest for belonging a clue? Is there a connection between diversity in nature and diversity in humans?
Zolani Mahola and the Feminine Force singing [00:05:36] Remember who you are… oh amphibious soul. Oh amphibious soul.
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:05:53] I’m Zolani.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:05:56] And I am Pippa.
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:05:58] You’re listening to “Back to the Water”, a podcast exploring South Africans’ relationships to their oceans and each other.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:06:06] This is episode one.
Zolani Mahola and the Feminine Force singing [00:06:10] Call you Amphibious Soul. So deep inside you, here to remind you. Voice of the ages. Calls you Amphibious Soul.
[cheering & clapping]
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:06:38] Zolani and I are entering a beige school building in Athlone, Cape Town. The compound is protected by a gate, tall walls and a guard. This place is part of the Cape Flats where colored people were relocated during Apartheid.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:06:56] In the 1950s, black people, colored people and Indian people were forced to move under a law called the Group Areas Act.
Zolani Mahola [00:07:06] You have welcomed me, You have welcomed me.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:07:10] I’ve heard people call Zolani a small giant.
Students in classroom [00:07:14] We love you so much!
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:07:21] While she might be short in height, her laugh can reach every corner of a room.
Zolani Mahola [00:07:26] My name is Zolani and I also go by the name of Lo Uculayo, The One Who Sings.
Zolani Mahola [00:07:34] Because why?
Zolani Mahola [00:07:36] I’m the one who sings. Some of you are very young. You might not recognize my face.
Students in classroom [00:07:43] The voice!
Zolani Mahola [00:07:44] But the voice you might recognize.
Students in classroom [00:07:48] Laughter.
Zolani Mahola [00:07:48] The shaker.
Students in classroom [00:07:50] We may have a new constitution, but as a people, it still feels like we’re contemplating unification all the time.
Zolani Mahola [00:07:59] Zolani begins to sing “Doo Be Doo”: Did you hear the news on the radio today…
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:08:04] I’ve heard from multiple people, that Zolani and her music are one of the things that bring South Africa together. Like, not everyone knows the words of the national anthem, but they do know the words to “Doo Be Doo”.
Students in classroom [00:08:21] Doo be doo be doo be do bye-yeah…
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:08:33] Zolani has been singing and performing across our country and the African continent for 20 years, but her first concerts were held in her childhood kitchen.
Zolani Mahola [00:08:43] And I remember, I’d be washing the dishes, singing to myself.
Zolani Mahola [00:08:51] And imagining that there was a camera watching me. Picture me…
Zolani Mahola [00:08:58] This nine year old so and so.
Zolani Mahola singing Whitney Houston [00:09:07] And IIIIIIIIIIIII will always love youuuuu.
Zolani Mahola [00:09:20] Washing the dishes. Washing the dishes. But I’m imagining there are these thousands of people, watching me. Zo Zo.
Zolani Mahola [00:09:37] Singing.
Zolani Mahola [00:09:39] And guess what?
Zolani Mahola [00:09:41] It came true.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:09:44] As she speaks, she walks in circles, staring into every student’s face while she talks. They look back at her with tears and adoration, passing around tissues, shaking with emotion.
Zolani Mahola [00:09:56] A lot of us feel like we can’t dream. We feel like we haven’t seen our aunties, our mothers, our fathers have their dreams come true. And so, why would my dream come true? Coming from New Brighton. A township, eNew Bright.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:10:21] A township is a term for neighborhoods where people were relocated by the Apartheid government. These areas were further away from city centers. Families left behind many things, including valuable coastal properties.
Zolani Mahola [00:10:36] My voice was taken away, which made me feel ba I can’t. I’m not worth anything. There’s many things, guys, that can stand in your way. And in South Africa, there’s many things that have stood in our way and that will stand in our way. But your way is still your way. Your dream is still your dream.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:11:02] Hearing Zolani belting out Whitney Houston, it’s hard to imagine her silenced. But I’m also not surprised.
Zolani Mahola [00:11:14] When I was six, in 1988, my mother was herself only 38 years old, and she and my father were about to have this really amazing upward-moving stage in their lives. She was pregnant with their fourth child. He’d just been promoted in his job, and then they were in the process of waiting for a bond to come through on a house in a better area. Unfortunately, there was a huge rupture in the middle of all of that.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:11:55] Zolani’s mom, Nomvula Edith Mahola, died on a Tuesday along with her baby. She experienced complications with her blood pressure relating to the pregnancy, and the hospitals available for black communities were strained.
Zolani Mahola [00:12:11] We had inferior everything. Everything was inferior. So, we had less resources in the hospitals. There were fewer doctors, you know, all sorts of things.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:12:20] Just as her family suffered an enormous loss, the bond for the new house came through. And so they began their move from a rough neighborhood to a slightly nicer area and a bigger home.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:12:33] In their new township, New Brighton, Zolani felt alone. And feeding her loneliness, she started school on the opposite side of town.
Zolani Mahola [00:12:44] We were starting to go to these, like this multi-racial school, just in a very different environment to the environment at home and in my community.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:12:56] The long ride to school reinforced for Zolani what it meant to be a child of color in Apartheid South Africa.
Zolani Mahola [00:13:04] From leaving the township, going through an industrial area, then more affluent areas and arriving at my school and everything was different. There, there is a pristineness and a very different kind of way of being in space. So much more space. But no space really, for that Zolani.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:13:35] Being quiet became Zolani’s way of coping when nothing was familiar. She had moved to a new home, started a new school, her mother was gone, her father, Doc, had started traveling nationwide for work and was rarely at the house. And to add to all of that rapid change, he quickly remarried. The new family did not treat Zolani well, silencing her further. The ocean could have been a comfort for Zolani, and she lived close to several nice beaches, but technically they were off limits.
Zolani Mahola [00:14:12] Going to the sea… going to the ocean was not a regular occurrence. And there were a number of reasons for that. Apartheid literally means separate development, and so some areas were reserved only for white people, you know, or for colored people.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:14:30] This means the black and brown beaches were further away and in more dangerous areas. But, for a few days leading up to New Year, known as the Big Days, people from the townships would rent minibuses and fill them with family and food, and all together they would head down to the beach.
Zolani Mahola [00:14:50] It was special, the sense of feeling secure and in-community in these spaces that, you know, traditionally should have been our heritage but felt like we were… we were very fortunate to be guests. Yeah, if people hadn’t become disconnected from places that traditionally would have been holy sites – like forests, like rivers, like oceans – if we hadn’t become divorced from that, I think that our communities would be stronger for it.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:15:33] For Xhosa, Zulu and many peoples in South Africa, the ocean is more than just a fun place to recreate. The ocean is where all of the ancestors live. It’s like a holy site. People come to the water’s edge to hold ceremonies and pray the same way they would at a mosque or a church or a temple.
Zolani Mahola [00:15:54] …Zolani praying…
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:16:00] Without being able to access these sacred spaces or be her fullest self, Zolani stayed quiet. And then one day at school, a teacher said something.
Zolani Mahola [00:16:13] I was about 14 and it was really hot day and I was really nervous. And there was my teacher was Mrs. van der Linden, she was an older white lady. And we all had to read a passage. And I remember standing on the stage, and that was my first time kind of standing on a stage like that.
Zolani Mahola [00:16:31] And she looked at me at the end of it, and I just felt I had the sense of something being recognized. And I think that for somebody like me who had been feeling so unseen and unheard, that acknowledgment really made me feel like, oh, maybe there is something to my voice. Maybe there is something to me.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:16:55] That extra encouragement was just what Zolani needed to bring out the part of her that belted out Whitney Houston while washing dishes. By the time she was in university, she had been recruited for a band.
Zolani Mahola [00:17:10] My second year is when I met Aaron, who had started this band that would then become Freshlyground that I would then be in for 17 years.
Freshlyground [00:17:22] “Zipho Phezulu” is playing.
Zolani Mahola [00:17:22] The band itself was a kind of a microcosm of a greater South African / African landscape. The makeup of the band, the music that we were creating really became a sign of hope and beauty for a lot of South African people. So we started playing outside of South Africa, and started playing all over the continent.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:17:51] With their heroes.
Zolani Mahola [00:17:53] Hugh Masekela, you know Zimbabwean, Oliver Mtukudzi, uh Vusi Mahlasela, Busi Mhlongo, Johnny Clegg, these really iconic figures. Having a chance to be onstage with Stevie Wonder singing Happy Birthday to Mandela at Radio City Music Hall. Opening for B. B. King in Paris at the Zenith. Being in the elevator with Aretha Franklin and her bodyguard and like feeling like, whoa, I can’t believe this is happening.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:18:28] Back in the classroom in Cape Town, Zolani shared a painful truth about her great success.
Zolani Mahola [00:18:34] I remember it was the opening of the World Cup, and it was maybe like half an hour before we went up. And I remember I looked in the mirror and I just started crying. But it wasn’t happy tears. It wasn’t like, ooh, I made it. When I looked into that mirror, I thought. Me?
Students in classroom [00:19:06] You.
Zolani Mahola [00:19:08] Right. I was like, I don’t deserve this. And I realized then, ba, oh, there’s still a part of me, that little girl. That little girl who was told ba, uh-uh, you’re nothing, you won’t, you’ll never amount to anything. The good news is, I did go out, and I sang the song.
Zolani Mahola [00:19:32] I went there and I sang the song.
Zolani Mahola [00:19:34] And it was amazing.
Students in classroom [00:19:35] Yes.
Zolani Mahola [00:19:36] But I realized, ba I had to look at my own story about myself. The story that I was really living with was that I’m not enough. You can cry, it’s not a problem. Crying is never an issue. Yeah. And so I went on a journey. A real journey now. To find myself and to find my voice, my true voice, my voice.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:20:05] This is about when I met Zolani. She had just turned 38 and everything in her life was changing. But Zolani doesn’t share all of that with the class. Right now, she’s here to sing and to look into their eyes and give them just a little extra encouragement so that they know that their voices are important, too.
Zolani Mahola [00:20:28] So let’s sing this song, “Waka Waka”. I love this song.
Zolani Mahola & students in classroom [00:20:33] Tzamina mina eh eh, Waka waka eh eh, Tsamina mina Zangalewa Anawa aa, Tzamina mina eh eh, Waka waka eh eh, Tsamina mina Zangalewa, This time for Africa. Abuya lamajoni piki piki mama, one a to z! Bathi susa lamajoni piki piki mama from east to west. Bathi waka waka ma EH EH! Waka waka ma EH EH! Zonk’ izizwe mazibuye… Cos this is Africa. Wa ehhh wa ehh wa ehh…
[mouth harp]
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:21:31] Pippa’s journey to understanding belonging in South Africa came into really sharp focus in a classroom on the East Coast. But in some ways she navigates it every day in Cape Town’s Deep South.
[baboons barking]
Pippa Ehrlich [00:21:44] And they are constantly screaming in the middle of the night and fighting with each other and stealing from each other and shrieking at the top of their lungs and trying to break into my house.
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:21:58] Pippa’s closest neighbors are a resident baboon troop. She lives alone in a 115 year old stone farmhouse surrounded by protea trees and fynbos. Her internet’s intermittent. There are no nearby stores.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:22:12] I love it here. It’s really quiet. It can get lonely and it can feel isolated at times.
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:22:20] She misses having a local coffee shop and more people nearby. But she came here because she needed some space. And the location is pretty important for her work.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:22:30] This is pretty much as far south, or at least as close to the tip of Africa as you can get.
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:22:36] The Great African Seaforest is minutes away, and heritage spots full of ostrich beads and stone tools are right around the corner. And these are things that Pippa thinks about all the time. So to her, the location is worth navigating some close encounters of the baboon kind.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:22:54] I’ve got really good with baboons now.
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:22:56] Pippa’s house is full of artifacts.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:23:00] Ear bone of a humpback. This is the ear bone of a beaked whale, which is like a huge dolphin… It’s like really finding the rarest, most beautiful diamond.
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:23:11] Whether it’s baboons and humans or the dynamics between an octopus and a man, Pippa studies relationships between creatures and the humans around them. Even as a kid growing up in the city of Johannesburg.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:23:25] My memories from childhood are of Incredible thunderstorms in summer [sound of thunder], like warm air, even though it’s raining so hard. And every now and again there would be these huge swarms of ants and termites with wings which would explode at the beginning of the rainy season.
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:23:47] Although she was a few years younger than me, Pippa also has childhood memories of Apartheid.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:23:53] I guess the first time I became conscious that there was something a bit weird about this country, I was five years old and I was at a private school. And in private schools, there’d been black kids allowed in the schools for a really long time. And I remember the teacher going around and asking every kid how their parents were going to vote.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:24:21] But I went home and asked my mom about it and she said, oh, well, the government’s deciding whether black kids are allowed to go to white schools that are like government-run. And I remember thinking, wow, because I’d always been in school with black kids, and it never really occurred to me that that that was a thing.
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:24:42] As the 1994 elections approached, Pippa was eight. The leading party in the new government was called the African National Congress or the ANC.
Archival Radio Recording of a Newscaster from 1991 [00:24:52] Now president in all but name, Nelson Mandela swept into the ANC headquarters to address his followers. “Now is the time for celebration for South Africans to join together to celebrate the birth of democracy.”
Pippa Ehrlich [00:25:10] I remember my parents being really scared, actually. But I of course, I didn’t understand the full context of everything. But I was really proud to wear that new flag.
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:25:21] One of the core platforms of the ANC was that the new South Africa would be a rainbow nation, a place where there are 11 official languages and hundreds of cultural communities, all equally calling South Africa home. This transition happened fast and it became something that we all grappled with.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:25:40] So it actually took me quite a long time to really realize how hard things had been for so many people in South Africa. You know, when I was growing up, most of my dreams seemed possible, and I kind of took things for granted. I learned to swim when I was a toddler, and my parents took us on holiday all the time, and there was always electricity in our house. And I never went to school hungry.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:26:09] And I’ve only really realized as an adult that it wasn’t like that for many of my contemporary South Africans at that time, and even today. But what I did always understand was what it felt like to struggle to belong, because the home I grew up in was very unstable. My dad was really struggling financially and drinking too much. And because of that, my parents were fighting all the time, and it was like we were living in a complete war zone, and all I wanted to do was just disappear into nature. But that’s not easy when you’re living in a giant city like Joburg.
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:26:52] In search of natural spaces, she went to study at Rhodes, not far from where I grew up in Gqeberha. She earned a degree in journalism and politics, and she realized she wanted to make documentaries about nature. Eventually, she started working as a journalist for an ocean conservation organization that focuses on sharks and rays.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:27:12] And suddenly I just knew so much. I was talking to all these marine biologists in every corner of the planet, and I got this huge overview of what was happening in our global oceans, and it just blew my mind.
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:27:25] Pippa also started freediving and developing her own relationships with the animals of the underwater world. One of her early memories was when she encountered her first big shark.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:27:36] It was a Zambezi shark, which is a bull shark and it was scary, and it was more than two meters long. And it was looking straight at me and swimming slowly towards me. And I remember… and I was holding my breath in this because I bet this must have been a very short moment, but I remember it so clearly and it felt like it lasted forever. And I remember sitting in the mid-water, looking left and looking right, because I wanted to know what this animal was interested in, and there was nothing around me.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:28:04] And I was like, oh shit, it wants to know what I am. And it was swimming towards me slowly and curiously. And what do you do if a shark approaches you in the water? You take your snorkel and you shout into the water. So I took it out and I went “waaaaah”. And all these bubbles came out of my mouth. And I literally saw the expression on that shark’s face, and it went like “huh”. And it turned sideways and scuttled off into the blue.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:28:31] And it was such an empowering moment for me because we’re all scared of sharks. But in that moment, I was just like, they are as vulnerable as we are, and they get frights. When we do something unexpected, it scares them off. So I guess when you start interacting with the ocean in that way, it’s this supposedly alien world, but you can also get really, really close to animals.
Zolani Mahola [00:29:00] She felt powerful and like she’d found where she belongs.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:29:04] I’ve never been a sporty kid. I was terrible. I was terrible at running. I was terrible at sports. I’m totally uncoordinated. But in the water, suddenly my body knows what to do. For a kid who is, like, incredibly awkward on land, to find a space where I was in my element was really exciting to me.
Zolani Mahola [00:29:25] Beyond her sense of personal becoming, she identified something exceptional about interacting with ocean creatures. Land animals have figured out that we human beings are, we’re predators, man. These instincts are these thousands and thousands of years old. They’re afraid of us. But underwater…
Pippa Ehrlich [00:29:43] We’re a mystery.
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:29:45] And to Pippa, that felt like a huge opportunity, one where humans and animals could form unique bonds, the kinds that could give people hope.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:29:55] When it comes to good storytelling, there are certain themes that everyone can relate to and it doesn’t matter if you’re talking about an octopus or a dog or a human. Traditional science communication in the way that we were doing it was very, very limited and only speaking to people’s minds.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:30:15] And I felt like we really needed to start speaking to their hearts, because that’s the thing that changes the way we make choices. So when Octopus Teacher came along… Plus, I had enormous respect for Craig as a filmmaker. It all just kind of fitted together.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:30:35] My Octopus Teacher is the story of a man named Craig Foster, who free dives every day, and he visits this octopus living in the kelp off the shores of Cape Town. The film itself explores the connection that can exist between humans and other animals.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:30:50] I was really, really determined to just keep it as a beautiful, simple story about a human being and his relationship with the natural world. It was an experiment we were running, and it was a huge risk and we were really lucky.
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:31:04] Pippa and Craig dove together most days for over a year, and Craig’s wife, Swati, she’d review their tape, she’d feed them snacks and offer her feedback. And every once in a while, they’d all sit back and they’d wonder if anyone would be interested in this film. And they bet that at most, maybe 10,000 people would watch it.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:31:23] We were shocked. We were shocked.
2021 Footage of the Academy Awards, Pippa’s acceptance speech: [00:31:29] Thank you to the Academy… I hope that it provided a glimpse of a different kind of relationship between human beings and the natural world.
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:31:40] My Octopus Teacher won an Academy Award. For weeks after the recognition, dive shops in major cities from North America to South Africa ran out of snorkels and masks. The waters around Cape Town filled with newly converted diving hobbyists, and people the world over renounced consuming octopus.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:32:00] And while thousands and thousands and thousands, perhaps even millions of people, really loved My Octopus Teacher, including people who are my heroes like George Monbiot and Jane Goodall and many others. There was a lot of criticism – there was criticism about it not being scientific enough. There was criticism about anthropomorphism. There was some very, very strange criticism about the sexual innuendos in the film. And none of those things really bothered me.
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:32:33] But then one day, Pippa presents the film in a classroom in Sodwana Bay. A few members of the audience challenged Pippa about some of the decisions that she’d made in the film.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:32:44] I’d come home feeling like I’d done something really good as a South African, and these women felt really, really hurt that the first South African documentary to win an Oscar was for a film about a white man who has enough resources and privilege to choose to go diving with an octopus every single day for a year.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:33:12] I felt really sad that something I made could bring out so much pain. But I realized in that moment that I’d missed something. That the ocean, for me it’s been this incredible space of healing, but for some people, it’s a really, really it’s a place of pain. And a place of injustice and a place that people have been forcibly disconnected from.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:33:35] And I realized that there were so many stories to be told about South Africans and the ocean.
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:33:41] And she felt that something needed to change but she couldn’t figure out what.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:33:46] As a white South African you are, you have to ask yourself questions about what kinds of stories you’re allowed to tell and how to tell them. And it can be a bit of a psychological mind maze. And I also understand why it might be painful for people to hear me call myself an African person or an African woman. I fully understand and acknowledge how that can be painful, but I also don’t know how to be anything else.
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:34:19] This question of belonging, it plagues so many of us in South Africa.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:34:24] Yeah. And I guess that that kind of sent me on this journey.
Zolani Mahola [00:34:29] A journey to hear more stories of people’s relationships to South Africa’s coastlines and to each other. And we begin with mine.
Pippa Ehrlich [00:34:40] Here is some of the rest of Zolani’s story. When Zolani turned 38, she looked at her oldest son, who was just six years old, and something inside her switched.
Zolani Mahola [00:34:53] This was the exact same point I was at as when my mother died. She herself being 38 years old and me being six years old. The symmetry of that led to a lot of very deep self-inquiry. I came to a decision, a decision that I needed to go on a journey.
Zolani Mahola and the Feminine Force singing “Ndibambe” [00:35:26] Xa sileli kunye kwezi intsuku.
Zolani Mahola [00:35:31] And the reason that I gave, and the reason that is true, is that I needed to go and discover my own voice.
Zolani Mahola and the Feminine Force singing “Ndibambe” [00:35:34]
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:35:38] Zolani separated from her husband. She told the group Freshlyground, that it was time for her to leave.
Zolani Mahola and the Feminine Force singing “Ndibambe” [00:35:44]
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:35:56] And then she received a call from Craig Foster, the non-octopus character in My Octopus Teacher. Craig was working on a musical collaboration with Yo-Yo Ma, a world famous cellist, about the Great African Seaforest, and he needed help from a songwriter. He called Zolani and asked her if she would go freediving with him. She said yes.
Zolani Mahola [00:36:18] And that was my very first kind of experience, but I had no idea what was going on beneath the surface.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:36:27] Most people’s first time swimming in the kelp forest can be a shock. For much of our lives, we’re told that you can’t touch things in the ocean. They bite, sting, scratch. But swimming through the kelp is the ultimate tactile experience. Zolani took to the water with surprising ease. After her first dive, there was a second and then a third.
Zolani Mahola [00:36:50] You know, I started getting my own, like, gear, you know, very quickly, and it completely changed my life. As I started to go more and more to the ocean, and by myself, I started developing this real relationship with the sea. I began to see these waving tall plants as embodiments of my ancestors. I began to have a sense that they were welcoming me into the space. And then a beautiful thing happened – without being told, as I would go into the ocean, I would receive these messages and the messages were…
Zolani Mahola [00:37:48] …Zolani praying
Zolani Mahola [00:37:52] Before I would go into the sea I would have to really show reverence.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:38:00] Zolani recalled the way her father had once taught her how to speak to her ancestors.
Zolani Mahola [00:38:06] He calls them. He calls his lineage. I remembered that. The reconnection of me with my ancestors and with the rituals of those who have come before me, have really informed, very deeply, a sense of who I am for myself. It has brought myself to myself. I always knew that there was power in my voice. I always knew that there was power of being myself, this black Xhosa woman fronting this multi-racial band. But, having gone on this journey to really discover my voice and having my voice be informed by the voices of those that have come before me.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:38:57] And this is how Zolani found her new name, The One Who Sings.
[Zolani Mahola singing]
Zolani Mahola [00:39:06] We might be post-Apartheid, but we’re not post-traumatic. You know, people are still living in in the trauma and they haven’t gone beyond it. And we are a nation that is very privileged to have this incredible natural heritage, which is a source of healing of those wounds, of that trauma, and can really reconnect us to our sense of value and pride in ourselves as individuals, as communities, as a nation.
[mouth harp]
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:39:48] Over the past several thousand years, human beings have sparked the elimination of half the world’s plants and over 80% of its wild animals. At times, I may struggle with the baboons that break into my house and steal my things. But I’m also impressed with their ballsiness. It’s hard to sit with the harm that we do to our planet every day, but that’s also what motivates me the most. How do we lean into a less destructive version of our humanity?
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:40:19] At the start of this episode, Pippa and I looked out at the kelp and we asked ourselves, what is our relationship to the water? And in finding our way back to it, through Apartheid, sharks, wonder, kelp, a film, an octopus, ancestors, and music. What difference, if any, has that reconnection made?
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:40:41] But we also realized something that is bigger than both of us. And it happened when we started talking to scientists and activists and policymakers and people up and down the coasts who are all returning to the oceans.
Kira Erwin [00:40:56] For all South Africans, this is an important story.
Dylan McGarry [00:41:01] It’s haunted by the legacies of how colonialism and conservation are deeply conflated and tied up to each other.
Joanne Peers [00:41:10] If you see somebody in a wetsuit, do you notice what bodies are in these suits?
Kira Erwin [00:41:16] If I am not a small scale fisher, then am I a poacher?
Chataninya Last Name [00:41:20] You don’t often see, an Indian girl diving.
Joanne Peers [00:41:26] That’s what draws me there, the fact that when I swim, I’m scared. Because it’s a critical reminder of the history of bodies in this country.
Chataninya Last Name [00:41:38] There’s a lot more people of color trying to get involved into the ocean.
Loyiso Dunga [00:41:43] We are reconnecting a severed link. Once upon a time, it was there. People thrived with their environment. They took care of the environment.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:41:53] Apartheid had significant impacts on ocean spaces and its communities. If we don’t feel like we belong somewhere, how can we take care of that place?
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:42:03] And without remembering and acknowledging, we are at the risk of erasing. And more importantly, we miss that opportunity to celebrate all of those incredible ways that people are finding their way back to the water and feeling a sense of belonging.
Pippa Ehrlich Narrator [00:42:19] In this podcast, we share these stories of hope.
Roushanna Gray [00:42:23] So the best thing to do is to make friends with the fishermen.
Aaniyah Martin [00:42:28] I’ve had to learn to love plastic, and that’s quite a big thing for me to even say.
Loyiso Dunga [00:42:35] Where culture thrives, biodiversity automatically thrives also.
Shamier Magmoet [00:42:41] Why did nobody tell me that this is here. Why did nobody tell me that I could come experience this for myself?
Dylan McGarry [00:42:46] It was the first time that the courts recognized that the ocean was a sacred site. That it was a place where the ancestors dwelled.
Craig Foster [00:42:54] Having relationships with specific animals focuses you so much on that animal that you might be, in some ways, missing out on the whole.
Kira Erwin [00:43:05] So the mobilization that’s happened in South Africa around the oceans has started, but there’s much more work to be done.
Zolani Mahola Narrator [00:43:18] We are finding our way back and we’re here to show you how.
Peter: This episode, called More than One Octopus is the first part of a new podcast series called “Back to the Water,” which explores South African’s relationships to the ocean and each other. The show is hosted and directed by Pippa Ehrlich and Zolani Mahola, who is also known as The One Who Sings. This episode was written and recorded by Cat Jaffee, and it was edited and sound-designed by Dennis Funk. Carina Frankal is the series’ executive producer and Sophie Foulkes is the production assistant and fact checker. Featured theme music is by the Feminine Force, with select tracks from the band Freshlyground. This show is a production of SeaChange Project, a nonprofit environmental storytelling organization dedicated to the Great African Seaforest and its inhabitants. This story was produced by House of Pod. For more information on upcoming episodes, subscribe to Back to the Water, wherever you’re listening, right now.
The Outside Podcast is made possible by our Outside Plus members. Learn more about all the benefits of membership at outsideonline.com/podplus.
