Listen To Your Footsteps

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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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