Listen To Your Footsteps

Lebo Madiba is the founder and managing director of PR Powerhouse, one of South Africa's most respected strategic communications firms. She has spent her career at the intersection of stories, brands, culture, and trust — navigating white boardrooms as a young Black woman, building a business from a bedroom and a Vodacom dongle, managing reputations for the likes of South African Airways, Nedbank, Cricket South Africa, and Maersk, and advising at the highest levels of business and government during some of the country's most turbulent years.

But behind the external power was a woman who nearly worked herself into medical collapse, who had to learn the difference between herself and her work, and who eventually chose to rebuild everything — slower, quieter, and on her own terms.

In this conversation, Lebo and Kojo Baffoe discuss:

Growing up in Pretoria and the grandmother who made her read newspapers
Climbing through some of the biggest PR agencies in the country
Starting PR Powerhouse with one client, one dongle, and no safety net
Managing crisis communications during the Zuma presidency and SAA's most difficult years
The doctor's appointment that revealed how close to the edge she had come
Divorce, therapy, and learning to separate the person from the professional
Why the rebuilt PR Powerhouse is deliberately smaller, slower, and more selective
What it means to finally have nothing left to prove

This is a conversation about what happens after the climb — and why the view from there looks nothing like you expected.

Follow Lebo Madiba and PR Powerhouse for more on strategic communications, reputation management, and leading with intention across South Africa and beyond.

Subscribe to Listen to Your Footsteps wherever you get your podcasts.

#PRPowerhouse #LeboMadiba #ListenToYourFootsteps #ReputationManagement #SouthAfricaBusiness #BlackWomenInBusiness #StrategicCommunications #AfricanEntrepreneurs #PRAgency #CrisisComms #WomenInBusiness #AfricanPodcast #BusinessPodcast #KojoBaffoe #PublicRelationsSA

What if the food your grandmother cooked was not just a meal — but a memory that could heal you?
In Episode 131 of Listen To Your Footsteps, Kojo Baffoe sits down with Mokgadi Itsweng — plant-based food activist, award-winning chef and author of Veggielicious — for one of the most honest and deeply rooted conversations the show has ever produced.
Mokgadi's story moves from a childhood in Mamelodi and Umlazi, through the kitchens of Brooklyn's Madiba restaurant, a personal health crisis, and back to the indigenous African ingredients her grandmother always knew were medicine. Sorghum, morogo, millet, hibiscus — not bird feed. Sovereignty on a plate.
Together, Kojo and Mokgadi explore grief and purpose, the politics of seeds and who controls what Africa eats, the tension between freedom and structure, raising a child who resists everything you believe in, and why cheap food always costs you more in the end.
This is a conversation about food. But it is really a conversation about memory, identity and healing.
Enjoyed this episode? Share it, leave us a review and follow Listen To Your Footsteps on Spotify so you never miss a conversation that matters.
#MokgadiItsweng #KojoBaffoe #Veggielicious #PlantBasedAfrica #IndigenousIngredients #FoodActivism #HealingThroughFood #AfricanFood #SouthAfricanPodcast #ListenToYourFootsteps #PlantBased #FoodSovereignty #HealthyEating #SorghumMillet #AfricanWellness #PodcastSA #AfricanStorytelling #CookbookAuthor #IndigenousKnowledge #FoodAndCulture #Agroecology #SeedSovereignty #PlantBasedPlate #AfricanChef #HealingFood

Veli Ngubane grew up belonging to nowhere. In the mornings he was the township kid at a Model C school. In the evenings he was the "cheese boy" who came back speaking differently. Neither world accepted him. That rejection, navigated daily across two distinct economies, forced him inward — and built a centre so solid that nothing has moved it since.
Today Veli is the co-founding partner and Chief Growth Officer of Avatar Agency Group, ranked the number two creative agency in Africa and the Middle East at the Loeries 2025, and co-founder of M&N Brands, Africa's first 100% Black-owned marketing and communications holding group. He has judged at Cannes Lions, chaired the IAB South Africa Transformation Council, and spent more than 15 years building one of the most awarded and fiercely independent agencies on the continent.
In Episode 130 of Listen to Your Footsteps, host Kojo Baffoe and Veli cover the full terrain — a rural KwaZulu-Natal childhood with a single mother who was his anchor and his first believer; an accidental entry into advertising after running a nightclub and barely attending Red and Yellow; the founding of Avatar with spiritual brother and business partner Zibusiso Mkhwanazi; and the decision to say no when global agency groups arrived with blank cheques and promises of freedom. "Don't sell," Happy Ntshingila told them. They never did. They remain the only two shareholders. They make their own rules.
The conversation goes deeper than the business. Veli unpacks why most brands do not have an awareness problem — they have a feeling problem — and why ABSA's "Your Story Matters" worked not by shouting louder but by shifting the light from the brand to the consumer. He talks about Aromat and nostalgia, Dove and warmth, Nike and identity. He talks about transformation, real power versus surface representation, and why he would rather grow entrepreneurship than BEE deals. And he closes on fatherhood — raising his five-year-old son Aiko with honesty, intention, and the quiet admission that being a father is healing a wound he has carried for a long time.
This is a conversation about building something real in a country and an industry not built for you — and knowing exactly who you are while you do it.
Subscribe, follow, and leave a review to help more people find these conversations.
#VeliNgubane #BetweenTwoWorldsBecoming #ListenToYourFootsteps #KojoBaffoe #AfricanEntrepreneurship #AvatarAgencyGroup #MNBrands #BlackOwnedBusiness #SouthAfricanAdvertising #AfricanCreatives #BrandStorytelling #ABSAYourStoryMatters #CreativeEconomyAfrica #AfricanPodcast #Transformation #Loeries #AfricanMarketing #Episode130

In this episode of Listen To Your Footsteps, Kojo Baffoe sits down with bestselling author, PR entrepreneur and TV co‑producer Angela Makholwa Moabelo to trace her journey from crime reporter to running Britespark Communications and writing some of South Africa’s most compelling noir fiction.
Growing up in Tembisa, Angela found refuge in books, hiding in closets with Reader’s Digest anthologies and discovering how stories could expand her world and deepen her compassion.
She talks about choosing a “life less ordinary” over a safe medical career, discovering journalism during the turbulent early 1990s, and following crime stories that led her into the orbit of a serial killer targeting Black women in Johannesburg.
Angela shares the extraordinary story behind Red Ink – how a planned non‑fiction project, prison visits and manipulative love letters turned into a groundbreaking crime novel and, later, a TV adaptation.
We explore how she built Britespark Communications from her apartment at 26, pitched major events like Miss Malaika while broke, and learned to “talk a big talk” long before the opportunities caught up.
She reflects on leading young teams across generations, running a business through recessions, juggling motherhood and multiple roles, and why she believes you must stay the constant while the world changes around you.
If you care about African storytelling, crime fiction, entrepreneurship, or what it really means to turn a life into narrative, this conversation is for you.
If you enjoyed this episode, follow Listen To Your Footsteps, leave a review, and share it with someone who loves powerful African stories. For more conversations, visit Kojo’s website and subscribe to the newsletter.
#AngelaMakholwa #ListenToYourFootsteps #AfricanStories #CrimeFiction #Noir #SouthAfricanAuthors #PRAndCommunications #WomenInBusiness #Storytelling #KojoBaffoe

Melanie “Hypress” Ramjee has been bringing the noise to South African culture for almost three decades – from running nightclub doors and bedroom record labels to steering sold-out festivals and global campaigns as a boutique PR founder. In this episode of Listen To Your Footsteps, Kojo Baffoe sits down with “The Empress of Hype” to trace a journey that includes Black August, the fax-era of press releases, MySpace and Twitter’s early days, and the gritty reality of building Tutone Communications from scratch.
They talk about how a mixed-masala childhood in Durban and Joburg shaped Melanie’s belief that “wealth is love and giving back”, why PR chose her long before she knew the job title, and what it really takes to keep a boutique agency alive when algorithms, platforms and audiences refuse to sit still. She opens up about heartbreak, losing everything on a hip-hop concert, choosing clients by energy rather than fees, and learning business lessons SARS-first.
Melanie also shares the quieter side of her work: blogging on Hyprïs Life, raising three kids while navigating ageism in youth culture, and finding deep purpose as a board member and deputy chair at Special Olympics South Africa, championing differently abled athletes who rarely get mainstream airtime. This is a conversation about hype, heart, hustling ethically, and growing older without losing your curiosity.
If you’re on your own creative or entrepreneurial path – in PR, media, music, sport or storytelling – this episode will give you both practical insight and a reminder that there is no single route to doing meaningful work.
Listen, share with someone who needs to hear this, and leave a review so more people can find these African stories.

#MelanieRamjee #Hypress #PublicRelations #SouthAfricanPodcast #AfricanStorytelling #TutoneCommunications #SpecialOlympicsSA #MusicIndustry #Entrepreneurship #WomenInPR