Notes Taken During our Meeting to Discuss the Podcast

 We had two meetings in preparation for our Podcast . The first meeting was on Teams on the 08th of May 2023 at 18h30. Where we roughly discussed how are we going to do the podcast and we all came up with ideas around the Podcast. Our second meeting was on the 10th of May 2023 in our everyday lecture venue and lecture time. This is where we discussed and practiced how the podcast will go. We agreed that each person must come up with two or more questions to ask during the podcast after they have given an overview of what their books are about. We also agreed that during our introduction we will give a bit of background about what is our individual research proposal about. Below are my questions for the podcast:

1. Who are the experts ?

2. Who is on the receiving end, who has excess to these technologies and Why?

Good afternoon, My name is Lerato Priscila Sauhatsi. I had done my undergraduate studies at the University of Pretoria with majors in Psychology and Sociology. I am currently doing my postgraduate studies at the University of Cape Town. Majoring in Industrial Sociology, however, my first choice and passion is Psychology. I hope to re apply this year to do my honors for next year 2024 in psychology, hopefully I make it.

 My research project is about ' Navigating leaving a customary/ traditional marriages: a content analysis on print media about how African women mediate the challenges of leaving a customary marriage'. I aim to empower women who are experiencing challenges in leaving a troubled marriage because of family involvement in the settlement of customary marriages, the court of law is also involved , patriarchy and unequal gender roles in a customary marriage. I hope that my study will create awareness and help women who failed to leave their troubled marriages by giving ways to help them survive or earn a living for themselves within and in those troubled marriages. This will be achieved by studying greatly on what other women in the media do to mediate the challenges of leaving a customary marriage.

  The question that I will like to focus on for this podcast is how did an infrastructure upgrading project become the subject of such passionate protests?

Today, in the post apartheid South Africa we have a number of protests and they all came in to being because of one protest against prototypes in Soweto, against water meters. The book subsequently follows the prepaid meter into the post apartheid era to examine its role in recurrent service delivery protests, as well as to consider what it reveals about the history of neoliberal policies in South Africa more generally. 

The book further explains the rent boycotts that began in Soweto in 1986, when township residents refused to pay rent for certain utilities. Many believed that the government has rolled out prepaid technology to help the community excess water but community activists and residence have instead read these administrative technologies as new forms of racism that disproportionately affect poor black residents, the marginalized. For South Africa, neoliberalism has meant the decentralization of basic services and the normalization of debt as a way of life.

Moreover, for the installation of the water meters the France engineers from the Suez Group team were used as experts. Why them? why were they the only experts assigned to the project of this magnitude ? Also the Phiri community in Soweto was used as an experimental site. Why was that certain area where most poor blacks resided used? why was the project not implemented in areas occupied by whites?