Khangela

Researchers Bongani Kona and Catherine Boulle have spent the last year piecing together the story of one woman’s decades-long search to find the remains of her father, a South African political activist who died in 1966. In between visiting old prisons and sifting through archival collections, Bongani begins dreaming about the ghost of his own father, a man he's never met.

The quest to uncover the meaning behind these recurring dreams leads to Julia, a spirit medium and healer, who practices one of the oldest forms of divination on the planet – “throwing the bones”. In consultation with ancestral and spirit worlds, Julia deciphers “energy fields within one’s psyche, spirit and soul body.” This is all to bring solace to troubled souls and minds; to “these soft houses in which we live”, as Kei Miller writes, “and in which we move and from which we can never migrate, except by dying.” Khangela, in isiXhosa, is to look, or to search.

Khangela forms part of our recurring series of miniature audio-works for Radio 3's home for adventurous radio-making - Between the Ears. In this series, five audio-makers from around the world were invited to choose a card from the tarot deck as a creative prompt for their idea. The card at the heart of Khangela is The High Priestess.

Bongani Kona is a writer, and a lecturer in the department of history at the University of the Western Cape. Catherine Boulle is an audio maker and writer, currently based at the University of Cape Town. Together, Catherine and Bongani won the 2021 Whickers Radio & Audio Funding Award for their documentary about South Africa's Missing Persons Task Team, and the case of James Booi.

Produced by Bongani Kona and Catherine Boulle A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 3