Common Good Podcast x The Liminal Space Episode 2: A Safe Space in a Not-So-Safe Place with Bongeka and Aphiwe

In this episode, Tristan and Rashid take us to Khayelitsha, one of South Africa’s largest townships, about 20 miles southeast of central Cape Town. Built during apartheid-era forced removals, Khayelitsha continues to bear the scars of spatial inequality. But in the heart of its informal settlements, two young founders, Bongeka and Aphiwe (Qhama), have created something remarkable: Thembisa Ratanga, a community space they describe as “a safe space in a not-so-safe place.”

Through a clip from the original Liminal Space episode, we hear Bongeka and Aphiwe reflect on the deep connection between nature, spirituality, and the body. Yoga poses that imitate trees and birds. Sunsets you don’t plan but can’t avoid. The quiet gift of a wetland on the edge of a township. Tristan and Rashid then unpack what it means to “just be” in a world that demands we constantly produce or consume, and ask whether rest itself might be a revolutionary act.

THEMES

Coming home to our bodies. Being vs doing. Nature as teacher. Rest as resistance. Spatial apartheid and its legacy. Yoga in the township. Eliminating economic isolation.

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE

This episode features a clip from The Liminal Space Season 2, Episode 11: What happens when we reclaim our stories and find home in our bodies? With Bongeka and Aphiwe. The full conversation runs about an hour and is available on all podcast platforms.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

FEATURED VOICES

Bongeka & Aphiwe (Qhama) are the founders of Thembisa Ratanga, a Khayelitsha-based NPO that uses education, art, and sport as tools for community development and self-empowerment. Their space has been dubbed “a waterfront in the township.”

Tristan Pringle is a life and executive coach, facilitator, and poet based in Cape Town.

Rashid Adams is a musician, songwriter, music producer, and ethnomusicologist based in Cape Town.

SUPPORT THEMBISA RATANGA

Bongeka and Aphiwe are currently running a BackaBuddy campaign to support day-to-day logistics and building improvements for the kids in their community. If you’d like to contribute, visit the link below.

CREDITS

 | Produced by | Rashid Adams
 | Music by | Arkenstone
 | A collaboration between | Common Good Podcast & The Liminal Space Podcast

LINKS

| BackaBuddy | backabuddy.co.za/campaign/tembisa-ratanga
| Full Episode | Listen on Apple Podcasts
| Podcast | linktr.ee/theliminalspacepod
| Substack | theliminalspacepodcast.substack.com
| Instagram | @theliminalspacepod

Transcript

Introduction

Tristan: Welcome to episode 2 of this collaboration between the Liminal Space Podcast and the Common Good Podcast. This is Tristan.

Rashid: This is Rashid.

Context: Khayelitsha

Tristan: Today we’re reflecting on an episode that we recorded in a neighbourhood called Khayelitsha in Cape Town which is about 20 miles outside of the city centre of Cape Town. To tell you a bit about the recording it might be useful to give you context of where that neighbourhood is in relation to the broader Cape Town area because that’s important in terms of the spatial history of the city. So Khayelitsha is a neighbourhood that was formed in the 80s or 1985 and the history is that it is birthed out of a place of forced removal where black people were moved from the city to the outskirts of the city in Khayelitsha and that was a deliberate effort to push black communities into the margins of the city away from economic opportunity and it continues to suffer from the legacies of that. Spatial apartheid is what we would call it here.

Rashid: Yeah.

Tristan: So Khayelitsha is often seen as quite a dangerous place. There’s lack of infrastructure. I don’t know what the American equivalent of a township is. Maybe I think a word like shanty towns. I don’t know.

Rashid: Ghetto.

Tristan: Ghetto. Maybe. But it’s all… it’s zinc homes. So shacks in South Africa we talk about. But there are also different parts to Khayelitsha where there are more built-up parts and less built-up parts. But a large component of it is informal what they call informal structures and informal setups. And so we had the opportunity to record with some friends of ours. Actually some friends of Rashid mainly at a place called Thembisa Ratanga. Maybe Rashid you want to say a bit about Thembisa Ratanga.

About Thembisa Ratanga

Rashid: Yeah. So Thembisa Ratanga was founded by friends called Bongeka and Aphiwe. And it’s such a special place. How they describe it is they call it a safe space in a not so safe place. And it’s primarily set up for kids and neighbours from the neighbourhood. They use education, art and sports as tools for community development and self-empowerment. And the current space of operation it’s been dubbed a waterfront in the township where they host a variety of programmatic activities including yoga for kids, live music and poetry sessions.

Rashid: And one thing that’s interesting about Thembisa Ratanga is that it’s positioned right at the edge of Khayelitsha. And it overlooks this a little bit of a nature area which Aphiwe he called at the time in the interview a swamp. That’s kind of like a bog that kind of thing. It’s this wetland area where you can’t build anything there. But what is quite beautiful about this and this is so rare for a township in Cape Town or in South Africa is that it is this nature area. So you do have birds and little creatures and quite a beautiful view. So it’s a really unique space in the townships. And what encourages me about what Bongeka and Aphiwe have done is where our local government doesn’t always take care of or concern for the areas on the margins of the city. They’ve just decided as two young people that they’re just going to do their thing and they’re going to set up the space that is needed. And that’s so safe and nurturing for the kids who go there every single day. So yeah really beautiful.

Tristan: Yeah and what was also on the recording day? What was really lovely and beautiful is that there were kids. Although there wasn’t a formal program running on the day we were there. But kids were just playing. It’s one of the safe playing spaces for these kids to be on this platform that they built for yoga usually. But kids were playing all sorts of different games on there. And actually in the full episode their kid walks into our recording which is one of my best moments on the podcast. But it was a really beautiful beautiful recording on that day. Here’s the clip from the recording.

Clip: Nature, Spirituality & Being

Rashid: Before we started recording I heard both of you talking about nature and plants and those kind of things. And I wonder if perhaps that’s part of the awakening that you were talking about. Spiritual things but then relating them to things on earth. Relating them to our very own bodies. And I’m wondering like this relationship between nature and spirituality and your bodies. What you would what you would say about that?

Bongeka: So I think we are all spirits. Something that I learned from yoga is that yoga poses are imitating nature and it’s never nature imitating us. So sometimes you are a tree. Sometimes you are a bird. Sometimes you are a cobra. So you are imitating nature and it shows that we are one as nature. And there’s no separation between us and the nature. And when you want to find connection with yourself which is something that I do as well. I go out to nature because it gives without expecting anything from me. It is mother nature. It’s even called mother because it’s nurturing us. It’s giving us.And every time we wake up and here we are blessed because we are in the informal settlements. We are surrounded by the shacks. But when you wake up early in the morning nature is saying hi. Life is peaceful. It’s giving a different message than someone who wakes up by the road. So you are getting a totally different kind of space. But we are in the same area. But the connection between us and what’s surrounding us is totally different.

Bongeka: And for me the resemblance of nature when I am here, I think it’s something that also keeps me going because in the evenings I know I am forced to watch the sunset. I don’t plan to watch the sunset. But the mountain, the green, the sky, the clouds, the birds, the water, it’s just a gift. So, hence, I believe that the more we come back to ourselves, the more we are going to understand that we are one with nature and we are not going to separate ourselves from nature. We are not going to want to harm the birds, always cut the trees. We are going to understand that there is an exchange between these and we, yeah, we are one. Thank you.

Tristan: That’s really beautiful. I mean, yeah. That idea that nature is a gift. You said nature gives without asking. That’s really beautiful.

Aphiwe: And I believe that’s what they refer to when they are saying being. They are just being. They are not proud about, I’m going to heal you. Therefore, I’m the healer. But us, we blow our own horn. If I make you famous through this podcast, you remember you got famous through this, but you were just being. You are offering the podcasting skill to the human race or to the universe for that matter, not just for us that can hear. We are not sure that trees can’t hear and all of that, but we are aware that they are breathing. They are growing just like us. They are being and therefore what we are lacking is being as human beings.

Rashid: It’s weird. It’s in our name, but we suck at it.

Bongeka: Yeah.

Rashid: Yeah. Yeah. That’s beautiful. Yeah. There’s the wind being there.

Aphiwe: And we can’t control it.

Aphiwe: Because I caught myself because I would say I’m the host because this is our home. And now we are trying to meditate and relax, but that is happening. And it made me realize that as the work that we are doing of wellness, they are different businesses. That’s God’s business. And I can’t do nothing about it. Then after that realization, I was coming back to myself. Relax. Thery are people, they understand this. So you can’t change what you can change, but be in this moment.

Tristan: We are different businesses here. 

Reflection: The Idea of Just Being

Tristan: So what stands out to me listening to that again is both Aphiwe and Bongeka talks about that idea of just being. And I wonder about that. Like, why aren’t we just human beings? We somehow feel the need to produce or consume. That’s what I’m thinking about it. Like, if we are just left to our own at the moment, we either feel compelled to produce, to be productive, or otherwise we’re lazy. Maybe that’s the counter argument. Or to consume. And I know, actually, Eshcha, before the recording we were having this conversation, shout out to Rashid’s wife, we were talking about how sometimes for people that can even be survival, like they are forced to produce in order to survive. And it’s just interesting that we are so alienated from the natural world, actually, that other creatures can just be. And we’ve created a world where we don’t just do that. What do you think is at play there, if you had to call out something?

Rashid: I think as humans we… Can I talk about God? I think we sometimes misinterpret that idea of dominion. And I think that humility asks the question, what can we learn, for example, from the natural world, from trees and rivers and all of the above, and birds. I think that that would be really, really helpful if we could do that. And if we could pause and sit and stop extracting, stop consuming, and just begin to be… I think that would be helpful.

Tristan: I mean, if I were to come at it at a different angle, I’d also say it’s part of our economic structure. Like, the way economics have been set up in the world means that we… It forces us to consume, and it makes us feel bad about being… Just being. So even rest can feel bad. And so in some ways, rest is a revolutionary idea in this context, which is a weird thing to say. But if we were to take seriously being different, or try to imagine a different world, I’d want to imagine a world where rest is normal, simply because you are human, not because you somehow worked hard and now you rest, or you work so hard that you burn out. And I often wonder about that in people who are trying to make a difference in the world. I think sometimes we praise those who work super hard at all costs. And I don’t know if we do succeed in making the world a better place. Do we carry that over? Like, in part of making a new world, surely the way in which we go about it is also important, because we’ll carry that over into whatever comes next.

Rashid: Yeah. True. Yeah, that’s really good. I hear you, bro. But how can that be possible?

Tristan: That’s a good question. Part of my thinking on that is that I think this idea of that common good, common change, I like to talk about economic isolation. I think probably summarizes it up quite well is that we can’t have a world where rest is possible unless we eliminate economic isolation. So people, and again, if I’m talking to people who are trying or imagining a better world, I believe they can only do it as a collective together. So if we do it together and we’re not just doing this on our own, then I think we can let some people rest at a time. So we don’t all have to be working all the time. Yeah. We can let other people do some of the work.

Rashid: Yeah.

Tristan: And sometimes removing ourselves from a process or an organization or something is necessary for things to move along without us.

Rashid: Yes. Yeah. Beautiful.

Mindfulness Moment

Tristan: So how about we try and experiment, Rashid? I wondered if we could practice being present for a minute. And what we’ll do is we’ll start the minute with some music. And the task of you, the listener, is just to sit there and be and notice what your body is doing, how you’re feeling, your surroundings, and just be present to this moment. And then we’ll find you at the end of the minute.

[One minute of music]

Outro

Rashid: So thank you so much for being with us for this episode and just to end we also wanted to share that Bongeka and Qhama (Aphiwe) from Thembisa Ratanga, they currently have a BackaBuddy campaign running where they are seeking donations to help with their day-to-day logistics and also some building that they’re doing to create a better space for the kids in the township to be at. So if you’d like to listen to the full length episode it was around an hour long you’ll be able to find it wherever you listen to your podcasts. It should be there. It was part of season two of the Liminal Space so the link will be in the show notes of this episode. So yeah thank you so much.

Tristan: Thank you very much. See you next time.

Rashid: You’ll hear from us soon.