Role: Creator and Executive Editor

Project Summary: In 2015, 14-year-old Siphiwe Mahori was killed in Snake Park, Soweto by a foreign shopkeeper. His death made international headlines and sparked renewed xenophobic violence across South Africa’s black townships. But by the end of that year, his name was all but forgotten.

In this six-part serial podcast journalist Tanya Pampalone, researcher Eliot Moleba and radio journalist Rasmus Bitsch return to Snake Park to find what really happened that day. Each 30-minute episode unravels how the death of Siphiwe Mahori speaks to issues of  migration, systemic xenophobia, Afrophobia, the failure of justice  and the value of black lives in contemporary South Africa. 

Organizations: Henry Nxumalo Foundation, Sound Africa, Daily Maverick