Listen To Your Footsteps

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.

João da Fonseca, better known as J Something, lead singer of Mi Casa, chef, and creative entrepreneur, sits down with host Kojo Baffoe for one of the most honest, joyful, and soul-stirring conversations the Listen to Your Footsteps podcast has produced.
Born in Portimão, Portugal, raised in the Eastern Cape, and now 15 years deep into one of South Africa's most beloved musical journeys, J'Something opens up about identity, the meaning of home, the magic of serendipity, and why his greatest fear is simply not paying attention to life.
From a chance encounter at a Joburg rooftop party that birthed Mi Casa, to the prophetess who told a 15-year-old boy that God wanted him to explore music, this episode is rich with the unexpected moments that shape extraordinary lives.
J'Something also talks candidly about his evolving creative process, his solo album-in-progress, the philosophy behind the Mi Casa name, the brotherhood of three that has survived 15 years intact, and why cooking became a love language that turned into a career.
This is a conversation about time, presence, gratitude, and the quiet courage it takes to stay joyful in a noisy world.
🎧 Listen. Reflect. Stay present.
#JSomething #MiCasa #ListenToYourFootsteps #KojoBaffoe #SouthAfricanMusic #PodcastZA #AfricanCreatives #HouseMusicSA #Entrepreneurship #Mindfulness #Gratitude #Fatherhood #Creativity #SoulfulConversations #AfricanPodcast