October 15, 2025 • 31 mins
South Africa has a bathroom monster that is the direct result of decades of racism in the area, and peoples' attempts to stay safe in life after the fact.
Reminder, October is TWIST season. Share your love for the Transylvania Twist by using #justiceforthetwist.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
An apartheid was condemned by the UN.
You know what?
Thanks, UN, for weighing in there.
I'm glad you did that.
I was really on the edge of my seat wondering, I wonder if this is right.
I better wait for the UN to denounce or approve it.
(00:25):
Welcome back to Privy.
Privy is a podcast about bathrooms recorded from my home bathroom.
I'm your host, Hunter Hoover, and I love bathrooms.
Welcome back everyone.
Thank you so much for being here and welcome back to our second 2025 episode celebratingSpooky Season.
(00:48):
Spooky Season, if you missed the first episode, go listen to our episode about theGolgothan.
Spooky season is...
A celebration, you know, it's high brow.
It's high brow.
And I noted this last time, but it's a combination of the idea of spooky and poo.
It's things that are bathroom related that are also kind of scary in nature.
(01:13):
Last time we talked about the Golgothan, a scary poo monster.
And in doing so, we learned about an old movie that I probably should have seen by now,but have not.
And.
We've got another bathroom themed monster for today.
But before we do that, I'm going to again, take just a brief moment of your time to tellyou about Twist Season.
(01:38):
It is officially halfway through Twist Season by the time you are listening to thisepisode.
And Twist Season for those who are unaware, go check it out on social media, Justice forthe Twist, but it's centered around
The idea that the colloquially named Monster Mash song, which is very popular this timeyear, is unjustly and inappropriately named such as it should be called the Transylvania
(02:08):
Twist as per the Crypt Keepers own words in the song wherein he wakes up from his slumber,looks at the monsters doing the dance that he called the Transylvania Twist, asks what
happened to it and
We are told by Bobby Boris and the Crypt Keeping Five that they are, that it has beenrenamed unjustly and unfairly to the Transylvania Twist.
(02:32):
Justice for the Twist at its heart is centered on the idea that the person who makessomething, it's about copyright.
It's about plagiarism.
It's reacting against the idea that somebody can just stroll on in to somebody's creativepiece and just rename it whatever they want.
We don't do that.
(02:53):
We don't want to do that here.
And so last time, you know, and go, so again, correct people if they incorrectly call thesong Monster Mash, make sure like you say, it's actually called the Transylvania Twist.
Post about the hashtag justice for the twist, hashtag justice for the twist online.
(03:14):
You can also use hashtag down with the mash, but justice for the twist got a good ring.
And share justice for the twist material that you see.
It is propaganda.
Sometimes you quiet.
The opposition via propaganda, that's a-
(03:34):
Now, on with spooky season.
uh Last time we talked about the Golgothan and I think I'm gonna don my poop witch's hatfor the show.
Happy spooky season.
Nothing spookier uh than a poo hat on a podcaster.
(03:58):
But we have another bathroom monster that we need to talk about today.
And in order to talk about this monster, we are going to need to contextualize ourselvesin a big way.
And you might hear that and ask why.
Why do we need to contextualize ourselves?
(04:18):
I mean, like, is it really necessary for us to do so?
Why can't we just...
talk about this bathroom monster and get on with our day.
First, I don't, don't you want to learn something?
Like I just put on a poop emoji hat.
Don't you want to learn something from me?
(04:40):
I mean, I can just come right out and bury the lead, but where's the showmanship in that?
Like, where's the fun?
Don't we want to have some fun?
We want to learn something along the way here.
We don't, we can't just, we're not just, and don't be like, oh, he's, he wants to get to,no, no, no.
I'll put out a five minute episode.
Watch me.
There's nothing to do with it.
Let's put some effort in here.
(05:02):
I've got a poop emoji hat.
Let's put some effort in.
Second, imagine Frankenstein's monster.
You got Frankenstein's monster, the bolts coming out of his head.
If Frankenstein's monster in your head, I'll imagine Frankenstein's monster without thecontext of the like village and the crazed doctor and all the other events of the story.
(05:23):
mean, the context that we find a monster in sets the tone and lends credibility to themonster.
And so I hope today to set the tone and lend some credibility.
to a very unknown monster to me.
And to do so, we need to talk about the early 1900s.
(05:45):
If you're like me and you know nothing about early 1900s in South Africa, don't worry.
I'm going to give you the purest version of a crash course on South Africa that you'regoing to find, I think, on these interwebs.
I'm wearing a poo hat.
It's going to be fun.
And by fun, I mean frustrating because there's a lot of like bad racism.
(06:10):
which was unfortunate.
In short, as we approach the 1900s South Africa had long been affected by the colonizationof European settlers.
This included, but is not limited to the Dutch East India Company.
Remember, we talked about them back when we, when we tried the cat poop coffee.
Go check our episode out on the Koopie Luwak and the cat poop coffee is actually prettygood.
(06:34):
Um, but these settlers known as Afrikaners
expanded more inland and clashed heavily with the African people who were there.
What are we waiting for?
It's crisp.
Little lime polar seltzer for our date.
It's so refreshing.
It just refreshes me.
(06:54):
In the 1800s, Britain took control of the Cape.
That's the, that's the bottom part like this, of South Africa.
Their policies pushing for and enforcing pretty strict racial hierarchies in the region,like bad luck Britain.
The biggest thing this did was limited land ownership for black South Africans in thearea.
(07:16):
This was made even worse when there was discovered to be diamonds and gold in the regionwith rich deposits in the area.
And it led to further subjugation.
It's the classic like, Hey, we can make some money on this thing.
We better like make life awful for people in order for us to make some money on it.
Subjugation occurred against the black Africans when the white Afrikaners
(07:40):
and settlers wanted cheap labor.
and sought to further limit the black Africans work opportunities in the area.
It's a classic like competition makes me a total butthole to my neighbor.
Like that's the short version there.
These colonial tensions laid a system which rose up out of it and would come to color andimpact the areas South Africa for some time into the future.
(08:07):
And I would argue even into today.
That is a system.
that became known as apartheid.
I have to be honest, apartheid is one of those words that I haven't heard a bunch oftimes.
Like I've heard it enough that I know of it.
(08:28):
And I know that it's a racial thing and that it's kind of bad, but.
Before preparing for this episode, if you'd have walked up to me and said, Hunter, I wantyou to explain to me apartheid.
I would have said, I don't know.
Ignorance, yeah, here it is.
(08:51):
couldn't for the life of me tell you what it was, where it occurred, or even attempt tospell the word correctly.
Thank goodness for Google AutoCorrect.
But in short,
Apartheid is a lot more than just colonialism.
In 1913, the Natives Land Act reserved most of the farmable and desirable land of SouthAfrica for use by the white people in the area.
(09:20):
This accounted for almost 90 % of South African land.
And to do so, they force black Africans in the region onto reserves.
Now we're going to talk a little bit about the laws which accomplish this.
Laws were passed that restricted black Africans movement throughout the country.
So they were stuck in these reserves.
Segregation in South Africa became the norm.
(09:43):
And by the 30s and 40s, schools, hospitals, and even entire neighborhoods and housingdevelopments were segregated by race.
Let me tell you about what we learned about this here in the United States.
This is bad and it doesn't work.
(10:03):
This made me start to ask, how is this not just segregation?
Like how is apartheid different than just like segregation?
To discuss that, we need to discuss life after World War II.
During this time, the white Afrikaners were worried they were going to lose economic andpolitical dominance to the black African and English speaking whites.
(10:30):
To work against these fears, the National Party in South Africa campaigned on a platformthat focused on a system called apartheid, which is Afrikan, meaning
So the word translates to the idea of being separated or apart.
(10:50):
This apartheid or apartness movement had the goal of continuing and having the governmentfoster and enforce segregation to ensure white dominance in the area.
This was made even more stark in the region when this party won the election 1948, whichthey were doomed to do as black Africans were not able to vote.
(11:14):
So of course, of course they won because the opposition wasn't even allowed to vote.
Why vote?
Why even do a vote?
That's like, hey guys, let's see what everybody thinks.
Do they want us in control?
No, no, only our friends are allowed to vote.
(11:34):
It's like a crappy high school popularity contest, king and queen vote.
This event brought in apartheid to the region and the times which followed were grim.
The Population Registration Act registered the population.
I know, it's in the name.
The naming conventions on some of these things are
just so on the nose, it's crazy.
(11:56):
Wow, right?
Like most of the most on the nose version of racism you can really get is like, hey, let'sregister people to the government according to their race.
This was exasperated by the Group Areas Act in the same year, which sought to furthersegregate residential districts by race, where those who didn't fit the makeup of a
(12:22):
community
would be forcibly removed and placed in a community which matched their descriptions.
So, not only did they have to register, they were forcibly removed based on their race andforced into residential groups that agreed with their registered race in the government.
(12:43):
This spilled over into the schools and public facilities, which were officially segregatedor aparted
If you will, 1953.
But it's at this moment in 1948, when the national party came into power based on thatfake vote, that we speak about the apartheid movement being a thing, which has officially
(13:05):
started.
It's not good.
Boiling tensions took a huge turn in the 1960s.
For a long time in the region, there were tensions and groups working to undermine anddismantle the ideology.
of apartheid.
Key activists such as Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela were crucial in organizing oftenpeaceful strikes, protests, and civil disobedience to speak against the unjust laws of
(13:34):
apartheid.
Things came to an impasse as they always do when someone is killed because of thesethings.
In 1960, the Sharpville Massacre marked a turning point
for the struggle regarding apartheid.
This event was deemed such as a massacre because a group of unarmed black protesters whowere speaking out against apartheid ideals were gunned down by a group of white police
(14:06):
officers killing 69 people and injuring 180 others.
Now lest you hear this and go, ah, this is the same.
This is not the same as what we've got going on.
It's not the same.
On the whole, our police force in the United States today in the year 2025 of our Lord isgood, helpful, and they do what is right by all of the people.
(14:32):
Now, are there crooked cops?
Yes.
And we should do away with them.
But I would argue and I would wager, I don't know this, I don't have a stat on this, but Iwould wager for every crooked cop, there's 20 to 30, ah I would say up to 50 cops who
(14:54):
exist that want to do good, that want to serve and protect, and that have made society andthe cities and the communities that they are in better because of it.
I am merely presenting
this violence as a historical event known as the Sharpville Massacre.
(15:16):
The rest of the world heard these shots and they condemned South Africa's apartheidpolicies and further solidified an anti-apartheid movement.
The government could no longer turn a blind eye to these things.
They couldn't get away with it any longer.
Like things had gone on too much and the world had seen it.
(15:41):
South Africa was slapped with sanctions.
Conflict rose up from within.
and there was a shift from peaceful protest to armed resistance.
Many leaders in the anti-apartheid movements as a result were jailed and others went intohiding.
One, those in the National Congress and the Communist Party were arrested for theirapartheid ties.
(16:08):
Notably, Nelson Mandela and seven others from the group were sentenced to life in prison.
Which Mandela famously said, quote, it's a cause that he was ready to die for.
It's a tough look again.
And indeed the world was looking on.
At some point, some of these things start to feel like the mouthy kid in class.
(16:33):
that thinks he's got something real smart to say.
He thinks he's got some like clever witticism and that he's got some funny thing to say.
So he starts to mouth off and make his point and he cracks some sidelines jokes at theteacher's expense and he thinks he's getting one.
But then the teacher stands firm and continues to speak sense in the situation.
(16:55):
And eventually when that happens, the rest of the kids in the room start to look at thekid like, would you just shut up?
Like just shut up.
That mouthy kid is the racist apartheid movement of South Africa.
Like the rest of the world is looking on going, hey guys, this is not the move.
(17:16):
These seclusions and isolations from the world increased in the 1980s.
It's kind of like, let's slap them with a little flavor of what it's like.
And apartheid was condemned by the UN.
You know what?
Thanks UN for weighing in there.
I'm glad you did that.
I was really on the edge of my seat wondering, I wonder if this is right.
(17:38):
I better wait for the UN to denounce or approve it.
Thanks UN.
I mean, at least you made the right choice.
You've kind of not come down on the right choice a couple of times very recently in ourtime, but like, I'm glad that you figured out that like racially segregating and targeting
a racial group and trying to remove that racial group from their own, you know.
(18:01):
Area is actually wrong.
Thank you for figuring that out.
Maybe figure it out again.
In time, the white businesses now fully separated by the rest of the country andcommunity, and in many ways the world because of their own policies, began to fail
economically.
Hit them where it hurts.
Their checkbook.
(18:21):
1989 and 1990 would mark the turning point.
New president F.W.
Clerk realized change was needed.
As these policies of apartheid were no longer sustainable and not just sustainable, but Iwould argue morally acceptable.
(18:42):
A seemingly poetic gesture, the man sentenced to death in prison, willing to die for thecause, was set free in 1990.
Nelson Mandela walked free after 27 years in jail.
Banned organizations were legalized and negotiations between the governments and theseliberation movements started.
(19:07):
Mandela and the president of South Africa, the bloke that I mentioned before, F.W.
Clerk, shared the Nobel Peace Prize for helping end the apartheid movement in 1993.
One year later, free election where all races could vote.
Wherein Nelson Mandela won by a landslide and became the first black president of SouthAfrica.
(19:33):
In Mandela's four to five year term, he worked to further dismantle the apartheid stainthat lay on his country.
And though they made a lot of progress, racial disputes and human rights concerns werestill at large.
And that begs the question, like what was life like?
You don't just wave a wand.
(19:53):
The crap wizard has arrived.
to wave his wand and expect the long held concerns that people had grown to know and builttheir society on to just magically disappear overnight.
Things are going to take time.
And while they do, you learn how to function in order to make it as the new system.
(20:22):
So we'll note it's spooky season and this is privy.
This isn't some history pundit show.
God knows there's enough of them.
I don't think there's many podcasts about bathrooms, but I'll tell you this.
There's plenty of historical commentary podcasts.
The internet's rife with them.
(20:43):
But how many podcasts does the host put on a crap wizard hat?
And I'll note, I don't really think that historical commentary is needed.
about apartheid, like it seems pretty awful.
I said, I think in modern days, we've seen the pendulum swing back and we've seenoppression of white South Africans in modern times.
(21:07):
One of the things that happens in the landscape of great social change is you have todevelop rules and ideas to keep yourself and those you love safe.
When it comes to children, sometimes the way you do so is through stories.
And one of the most effective types of stories is scary stories.
(21:28):
You know how many times a scary movie scene flashes through my mind as I walk through anempty house, a dark building, a lonely hallway.
And it's like, huh, what's the most horrifying and terrible thing that could happen to meright now?
And the image in my brain is usually one that has been put there via some horror story orscary movie that coupled with the reminder that
(21:53):
They couldn't just magically remake all the infrastructure in the area.
Once segregated bathrooms in segregated regions were left uncamped and often in poorcondition.
These could be even just mere pit latrine privies, if you will, and were not connected tothe building.
(22:13):
They were like a separate shack and were far away.
And if people needed to use the bathroom in these public spaces in schools,
They would have to often walk outside sometimes at night, sometimes in the dark to do so.
The infrastructure for the bathrooms were not clean and with less traffic because of theirpoorly kept conditions, it increased the danger of these bathrooms.
(22:41):
One tragic part of apartheid injustice that this is a trigger warning.
So if, if discussions of essay are,
not for you, I would recommend that you skip the rest of this episode.
It's not going to be a lot of conversation, but it is mentioned.
(23:02):
One tragic part of apartheid injustice was the sexual violence against women and sometimeschildren.
Warnings and other things abounded to help kids and women stay safe in the time after andduring apartheid.
That would end the regular proliferation of news media helped enforce these worries.
(23:26):
And also, while regular free speech was often limited in apartheid South Africa,
The tool of good storytelling could be used and tell stories about hard truths they wereunable otherwise to speak about.
This concoction has all piled up in Africa where it just so happens they have a knack forhaving these very specific demons and spirits, many of which are tied specifically to
(23:52):
certain locations and places.
So what are we getting at here?
This episode and the big reveal as we move to the end is our scary monster for spookyseason.
As the story goes, parents began to tell their kids cautionary tales related to going outto the bathroom at night or alone, or leaving the safety of the school to walk to the
(24:18):
bathroom.
Warnings of monsters that would get you sprouted up.
Then...
when the bathrooms themselves started to prove too dangerous for young women to access forany reason.
The tale of Pinky Pinky.
Pinky Pinky is said to be a terrifying half human, half animal hybrid being.
(24:43):
On a note, sometimes we hear half human, half animal and we think like, it's a cute littleMr.
Tumnus or it's like one of those centaurs from Harry Potter.
And there's some like level of like whimsy and majesty to the thing, or perhaps it's likea classic Bojack horseman route where the human part isn't necessarily the head.
(25:04):
See also dog man looking at you.
But this monstrous figure is described as being half human, half animal, and having largemonstrous claws and glowing eyes.
but this name derives in many ways, and not only as we're gonna see, because it is coveredin bright pink hair.
(25:32):
On that regard, with the long claws, glowing eyes, and bright pink hair, they've prettymuch described some strange gender-confused Portland weirdo.
I wouldn't want to run into that either.
But this monster was seemingly completely off the radar until the 1990s when it began toappear in town stories and news reports in South African townships.
(25:56):
Tales of a scary pink monster, half man, half beast,
who lurks in hiding and whose favorite target is young girls.
So if you need to go out, you better watch out.
This creepy monster might just be waiting for you.
But this is privy.
(26:17):
So we're talking about Pinky Pinky because Pinky Pinky waits for his targets in bathrooms.
He waits for lone school girls and young women to stumble in where he will.
And to make the whole thing worse and honestly just weirder, Pinky Pinky likes, I guess,pink underwear like weird, weird and bad.
(26:40):
Like, come on, bud.
We got to leave the, you got to leave the underwear out of it.
If you're making, if you're making a scary story or a horror movie or anything like that,you got to leave underwear details out of it.
It's not important.
But you can say pinky pinky.
Like he's got pink hair, he likes pink underwear.
(27:03):
It's already creepy enough that he's hiding out in like girls bathrooms waiting for women,but that he has like a type of underwear is it's very perverted, like pervert.
It gives big old pervert vibes.
Pinky pinky likes the color pink.
(27:24):
But this bathroom monster is gross and bad and kind of menacing.
And it's weird because it's not tied to ancient spirits or stories or phenomenon that tryto explain some bathroom related reality.
Pinky Pinky is a direct result of apartheid anxieties in young women in South Africa andtheir parents and adults in their lives wanting
(27:53):
to protect them from harm.
It arose out of a culture whose demons and spirits are tied to locations and haunt certainplaces.
And so to help the young girls be safe, thus arose the tale of Pinky Pinky, the creaturewho lurks in bathrooms.
(28:14):
And what's scarier is I believe Pinky Pinky attacks happened, but they weren't PinkyPinkies.
They were domestic assaults, sexual assaults and kidnappings.
When little girls in the area ask their parents or their teacher where their friend went,who never came back from the bathroom, they could detail the horrors of a violent
(28:42):
kidnapping and the abuse and assault that likely ensued.
Or they can package those things in a monster who stands in for that, who is theembodiment of those anxieties.
and who hopefully would scare other young girls enough to steer them away from bathroomsin that area or remind them to not go alone.
(29:12):
Pinky Pinky is the South African toilet monster that the Apartheid
This has been another spooky installment of Privy.
Thank you so much for being here.
Check us out online, privy-cast.com.
(29:33):
Send us an email, privycast.gmail.com.
We'd love to hear from you.
Leave us a rating or review.
The five-star options are preferred.
You can leave us a Spotify and Apple podcast, and we will donate a dollar for every ratingor review left to Wounded Warriors and Living Water International.
As a reminder to keep pooping in the free world, that free world was not always free.
and in pursuit of cleaner water for all.
(29:53):
Not everybody has clean water, but everybody should.
We'd also encourage you to follow us on social media at privycast.
Share the show with a friend online.
Say, hey, this man talked about bad South African racism and a strange pervert pinkmonster while wearing a crap wizard hat in a bathroom.
(30:16):
Share the show with friend.
We'd love for you to do so.
You can follow me.
I'm at Owlet7.
My son and I have been opening Pokemon cards together.
If you want to go check out those pack openings, we got a bunch of pack openings, go checkout RowletRipsTCG.
If you Instagram that at RowletRips or at RowletRipsTCG, you should find it.
(30:36):
It's also on TikTok.
Give it a follow.
My son would love to see that folks are watching along.
It's fun for him.
This brings us to the end.
of another episode of Preview.
Thank you to Kevin and Puddington for the use of your music.
Weird thing YouTube's doing.
go check out their stuff.
Kevin, McCloud, and Puddington Bear.
(30:57):
If I put their links down below, YouTube gets all grumpy right now.
So we're not going to do that.
This brings us to the end of another episode of Preview.
Thank you so much for being here.
Keep pooping in the free world.
Own your stank.
Fight those pinky pinkies.
And now, as always, don't forget to flush.
An apartheid was condemned by the UN.
You know what?
Thanks, UN, for weighing in there.
I'm glad you did that.
I was really on the edge of my seat wondering, I wonder if this is right.
I better wait for the UN to denounce or approve it.
(00:25):
Welcome back to Privy.
Privy is a podcast about bathrooms recorded from my home bathroom.
I'm your host, Hunter Hoover, and I love bathrooms.
Welcome back everyone.
Thank you so much for being here and welcome back to our second 2025 episode celebratingSpooky Season.
(00:48):
Spooky Season, if you missed the first episode, go listen to our episode about theGolgothan.
Spooky season is...
A celebration, you know, it's high brow.
It's high brow.
And I noted this last time, but it's a combination of the idea of spooky and poo.
It's things that are bathroom related that are also kind of scary in nature.
(01:13):
Last time we talked about the Golgothan, a scary poo monster.
And in doing so, we learned about an old movie that I probably should have seen by now,but have not.
And.
We've got another bathroom themed monster for today.
But before we do that, I'm going to again, take just a brief moment of your time to tellyou about Twist Season.
(01:38):
It is officially halfway through Twist Season by the time you are listening to thisepisode.
And Twist Season for those who are unaware, go check it out on social media, Justice forthe Twist, but it's centered around
The idea that the colloquially named Monster Mash song, which is very popular this timeyear, is unjustly and inappropriately named such as it should be called the Transylvania
(02:08):
Twist as per the Crypt Keepers own words in the song wherein he wakes up from his slumber,looks at the monsters doing the dance that he called the Transylvania Twist, asks what
happened to it and
We are told by Bobby Boris and the Crypt Keeping Five that they are, that it has beenrenamed unjustly and unfairly to the Transylvania Twist.
(02:32):
Justice for the Twist at its heart is centered on the idea that the person who makessomething, it's about copyright.
It's about plagiarism.
It's reacting against the idea that somebody can just stroll on in to somebody's creativepiece and just rename it whatever they want.
We don't do that.
(02:53):
We don't want to do that here.
And so last time, you know, and go, so again, correct people if they incorrectly call thesong Monster Mash, make sure like you say, it's actually called the Transylvania Twist.
Post about the hashtag justice for the twist, hashtag justice for the twist online.
(03:14):
You can also use hashtag down with the mash, but justice for the twist got a good ring.
And share justice for the twist material that you see.
It is propaganda.
Sometimes you quiet.
The opposition via propaganda, that's a-
(03:34):
Now, on with spooky season.
uh Last time we talked about the Golgothan and I think I'm gonna don my poop witch's hatfor the show.
Happy spooky season.
Nothing spookier uh than a poo hat on a podcaster.
(03:58):
But we have another bathroom monster that we need to talk about today.
And in order to talk about this monster, we are going to need to contextualize ourselvesin a big way.
And you might hear that and ask why.
Why do we need to contextualize ourselves?
(04:18):
I mean, like, is it really necessary for us to do so?
Why can't we just...
talk about this bathroom monster and get on with our day.
First, I don't, don't you want to learn something?
Like I just put on a poop emoji hat.
Don't you want to learn something from me?
(04:40):
I mean, I can just come right out and bury the lead, but where's the showmanship in that?
Like, where's the fun?
Don't we want to have some fun?
We want to learn something along the way here.
We don't, we can't just, we're not just, and don't be like, oh, he's, he wants to get to,no, no, no.
I'll put out a five minute episode.
Watch me.
There's nothing to do with it.
Let's put some effort in here.
(05:02):
I've got a poop emoji hat.
Let's put some effort in.
Second, imagine Frankenstein's monster.
You got Frankenstein's monster, the bolts coming out of his head.
If Frankenstein's monster in your head, I'll imagine Frankenstein's monster without thecontext of the like village and the crazed doctor and all the other events of the story.
(05:23):
mean, the context that we find a monster in sets the tone and lends credibility to themonster.
And so I hope today to set the tone and lend some credibility.
to a very unknown monster to me.
And to do so, we need to talk about the early 1900s.
(05:45):
If you're like me and you know nothing about early 1900s in South Africa, don't worry.
I'm going to give you the purest version of a crash course on South Africa that you'regoing to find, I think, on these interwebs.
I'm wearing a poo hat.
It's going to be fun.
And by fun, I mean frustrating because there's a lot of like bad racism.
(06:10):
which was unfortunate.
In short, as we approach the 1900s South Africa had long been affected by the colonizationof European settlers.
This included, but is not limited to the Dutch East India Company.
Remember, we talked about them back when we, when we tried the cat poop coffee.
Go check our episode out on the Koopie Luwak and the cat poop coffee is actually prettygood.
(06:34):
Um, but these settlers known as Afrikaners
expanded more inland and clashed heavily with the African people who were there.
What are we waiting for?
It's crisp.
Little lime polar seltzer for our date.
It's so refreshing.
It just refreshes me.
(06:54):
In the 1800s, Britain took control of the Cape.
That's the, that's the bottom part like this, of South Africa.
Their policies pushing for and enforcing pretty strict racial hierarchies in the region,like bad luck Britain.
The biggest thing this did was limited land ownership for black South Africans in thearea.
(07:16):
This was made even worse when there was discovered to be diamonds and gold in the regionwith rich deposits in the area.
And it led to further subjugation.
It's the classic like, Hey, we can make some money on this thing.
We better like make life awful for people in order for us to make some money on it.
Subjugation occurred against the black Africans when the white Afrikaners
(07:40):
and settlers wanted cheap labor.
and sought to further limit the black Africans work opportunities in the area.
It's a classic like competition makes me a total butthole to my neighbor.
Like that's the short version there.
These colonial tensions laid a system which rose up out of it and would come to color andimpact the areas South Africa for some time into the future.
(08:07):
And I would argue even into today.
That is a system.
that became known as apartheid.
I have to be honest, apartheid is one of those words that I haven't heard a bunch oftimes.
Like I've heard it enough that I know of it.
(08:28):
And I know that it's a racial thing and that it's kind of bad, but.
Before preparing for this episode, if you'd have walked up to me and said, Hunter, I wantyou to explain to me apartheid.
I would have said, I don't know.
Ignorance, yeah, here it is.
(08:51):
couldn't for the life of me tell you what it was, where it occurred, or even attempt tospell the word correctly.
Thank goodness for Google AutoCorrect.
But in short,
Apartheid is a lot more than just colonialism.
In 1913, the Natives Land Act reserved most of the farmable and desirable land of SouthAfrica for use by the white people in the area.
(09:20):
This accounted for almost 90 % of South African land.
And to do so, they force black Africans in the region onto reserves.
Now we're going to talk a little bit about the laws which accomplish this.
Laws were passed that restricted black Africans movement throughout the country.
So they were stuck in these reserves.
Segregation in South Africa became the norm.
(09:43):
And by the 30s and 40s, schools, hospitals, and even entire neighborhoods and housingdevelopments were segregated by race.
Let me tell you about what we learned about this here in the United States.
This is bad and it doesn't work.
(10:03):
This made me start to ask, how is this not just segregation?
Like how is apartheid different than just like segregation?
To discuss that, we need to discuss life after World War II.
During this time, the white Afrikaners were worried they were going to lose economic andpolitical dominance to the black African and English speaking whites.
(10:30):
To work against these fears, the National Party in South Africa campaigned on a platformthat focused on a system called apartheid, which is Afrikan, meaning
So the word translates to the idea of being separated or apart.
(10:50):
This apartheid or apartness movement had the goal of continuing and having the governmentfoster and enforce segregation to ensure white dominance in the area.
This was made even more stark in the region when this party won the election 1948, whichthey were doomed to do as black Africans were not able to vote.
(11:14):
So of course, of course they won because the opposition wasn't even allowed to vote.
Why vote?
Why even do a vote?
That's like, hey guys, let's see what everybody thinks.
Do they want us in control?
No, no, only our friends are allowed to vote.
(11:34):
It's like a crappy high school popularity contest, king and queen vote.
This event brought in apartheid to the region and the times which followed were grim.
The Population Registration Act registered the population.
I know, it's in the name.
The naming conventions on some of these things are
just so on the nose, it's crazy.
(11:56):
Wow, right?
Like most of the most on the nose version of racism you can really get is like, hey, let'sregister people to the government according to their race.
This was exasperated by the Group Areas Act in the same year, which sought to furthersegregate residential districts by race, where those who didn't fit the makeup of a
(12:22):
community
would be forcibly removed and placed in a community which matched their descriptions.
So, not only did they have to register, they were forcibly removed based on their race andforced into residential groups that agreed with their registered race in the government.
(12:43):
This spilled over into the schools and public facilities, which were officially segregatedor aparted
If you will, 1953.
But it's at this moment in 1948, when the national party came into power based on thatfake vote, that we speak about the apartheid movement being a thing, which has officially
(13:05):
started.
It's not good.
Boiling tensions took a huge turn in the 1960s.
For a long time in the region, there were tensions and groups working to undermine anddismantle the ideology.
of apartheid.
Key activists such as Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela were crucial in organizing oftenpeaceful strikes, protests, and civil disobedience to speak against the unjust laws of
(13:34):
apartheid.
Things came to an impasse as they always do when someone is killed because of thesethings.
In 1960, the Sharpville Massacre marked a turning point
for the struggle regarding apartheid.
This event was deemed such as a massacre because a group of unarmed black protesters whowere speaking out against apartheid ideals were gunned down by a group of white police
(14:06):
officers killing 69 people and injuring 180 others.
Now lest you hear this and go, ah, this is the same.
This is not the same as what we've got going on.
It's not the same.
On the whole, our police force in the United States today in the year 2025 of our Lord isgood, helpful, and they do what is right by all of the people.
(14:32):
Now, are there crooked cops?
Yes.
And we should do away with them.
But I would argue and I would wager, I don't know this, I don't have a stat on this, but Iwould wager for every crooked cop, there's 20 to 30, ah I would say up to 50 cops who
(14:54):
exist that want to do good, that want to serve and protect, and that have made society andthe cities and the communities that they are in better because of it.
I am merely presenting
this violence as a historical event known as the Sharpville Massacre.
(15:16):
The rest of the world heard these shots and they condemned South Africa's apartheidpolicies and further solidified an anti-apartheid movement.
The government could no longer turn a blind eye to these things.
They couldn't get away with it any longer.
Like things had gone on too much and the world had seen it.
(15:41):
South Africa was slapped with sanctions.
Conflict rose up from within.
and there was a shift from peaceful protest to armed resistance.
Many leaders in the anti-apartheid movements as a result were jailed and others went intohiding.
One, those in the National Congress and the Communist Party were arrested for theirapartheid ties.
(16:08):
Notably, Nelson Mandela and seven others from the group were sentenced to life in prison.
Which Mandela famously said, quote, it's a cause that he was ready to die for.
It's a tough look again.
And indeed the world was looking on.
At some point, some of these things start to feel like the mouthy kid in class.
(16:33):
that thinks he's got something real smart to say.
He thinks he's got some like clever witticism and that he's got some funny thing to say.
So he starts to mouth off and make his point and he cracks some sidelines jokes at theteacher's expense and he thinks he's getting one.
But then the teacher stands firm and continues to speak sense in the situation.
(16:55):
And eventually when that happens, the rest of the kids in the room start to look at thekid like, would you just shut up?
Like just shut up.
That mouthy kid is the racist apartheid movement of South Africa.
Like the rest of the world is looking on going, hey guys, this is not the move.
(17:16):
These seclusions and isolations from the world increased in the 1980s.
It's kind of like, let's slap them with a little flavor of what it's like.
And apartheid was condemned by the UN.
You know what?
Thanks UN for weighing in there.
I'm glad you did that.
I was really on the edge of my seat wondering, I wonder if this is right.
(17:38):
I better wait for the UN to denounce or approve it.
Thanks UN.
I mean, at least you made the right choice.
You've kind of not come down on the right choice a couple of times very recently in ourtime, but like, I'm glad that you figured out that like racially segregating and targeting
a racial group and trying to remove that racial group from their own, you know.
(18:01):
Area is actually wrong.
Thank you for figuring that out.
Maybe figure it out again.
In time, the white businesses now fully separated by the rest of the country andcommunity, and in many ways the world because of their own policies, began to fail
economically.
Hit them where it hurts.
Their checkbook.
(18:21):
1989 and 1990 would mark the turning point.
New president F.W.
Clerk realized change was needed.
As these policies of apartheid were no longer sustainable and not just sustainable, but Iwould argue morally acceptable.
(18:42):
A seemingly poetic gesture, the man sentenced to death in prison, willing to die for thecause, was set free in 1990.
Nelson Mandela walked free after 27 years in jail.
Banned organizations were legalized and negotiations between the governments and theseliberation movements started.
(19:07):
Mandela and the president of South Africa, the bloke that I mentioned before, F.W.
Clerk, shared the Nobel Peace Prize for helping end the apartheid movement in 1993.
One year later, free election where all races could vote.
Wherein Nelson Mandela won by a landslide and became the first black president of SouthAfrica.
(19:33):
In Mandela's four to five year term, he worked to further dismantle the apartheid stainthat lay on his country.
And though they made a lot of progress, racial disputes and human rights concerns werestill at large.
And that begs the question, like what was life like?
You don't just wave a wand.
(19:53):
The crap wizard has arrived.
to wave his wand and expect the long held concerns that people had grown to know and builttheir society on to just magically disappear overnight.
Things are going to take time.
And while they do, you learn how to function in order to make it as the new system.
(20:22):
So we'll note it's spooky season and this is privy.
This isn't some history pundit show.
God knows there's enough of them.
I don't think there's many podcasts about bathrooms, but I'll tell you this.
There's plenty of historical commentary podcasts.
The internet's rife with them.
(20:43):
But how many podcasts does the host put on a crap wizard hat?
And I'll note, I don't really think that historical commentary is needed.
about apartheid, like it seems pretty awful.
I said, I think in modern days, we've seen the pendulum swing back and we've seenoppression of white South Africans in modern times.
(21:07):
One of the things that happens in the landscape of great social change is you have todevelop rules and ideas to keep yourself and those you love safe.
When it comes to children, sometimes the way you do so is through stories.
And one of the most effective types of stories is scary stories.
(21:28):
You know how many times a scary movie scene flashes through my mind as I walk through anempty house, a dark building, a lonely hallway.
And it's like, huh, what's the most horrifying and terrible thing that could happen to meright now?
And the image in my brain is usually one that has been put there via some horror story orscary movie that coupled with the reminder that
(21:53):
They couldn't just magically remake all the infrastructure in the area.
Once segregated bathrooms in segregated regions were left uncamped and often in poorcondition.
These could be even just mere pit latrine privies, if you will, and were not connected tothe building.
(22:13):
They were like a separate shack and were far away.
And if people needed to use the bathroom in these public spaces in schools,
They would have to often walk outside sometimes at night, sometimes in the dark to do so.
The infrastructure for the bathrooms were not clean and with less traffic because of theirpoorly kept conditions, it increased the danger of these bathrooms.
(22:41):
One tragic part of apartheid injustice that this is a trigger warning.
So if, if discussions of essay are,
not for you, I would recommend that you skip the rest of this episode.
It's not going to be a lot of conversation, but it is mentioned.
(23:02):
One tragic part of apartheid injustice was the sexual violence against women and sometimeschildren.
Warnings and other things abounded to help kids and women stay safe in the time after andduring apartheid.
That would end the regular proliferation of news media helped enforce these worries.
(23:26):
And also, while regular free speech was often limited in apartheid South Africa,
The tool of good storytelling could be used and tell stories about hard truths they wereunable otherwise to speak about.
This concoction has all piled up in Africa where it just so happens they have a knack forhaving these very specific demons and spirits, many of which are tied specifically to
(23:52):
certain locations and places.
So what are we getting at here?
This episode and the big reveal as we move to the end is our scary monster for spookyseason.
As the story goes, parents began to tell their kids cautionary tales related to going outto the bathroom at night or alone, or leaving the safety of the school to walk to the
(24:18):
bathroom.
Warnings of monsters that would get you sprouted up.
Then...
when the bathrooms themselves started to prove too dangerous for young women to access forany reason.
The tale of Pinky Pinky.
Pinky Pinky is said to be a terrifying half human, half animal hybrid being.
(24:43):
On a note, sometimes we hear half human, half animal and we think like, it's a cute littleMr.
Tumnus or it's like one of those centaurs from Harry Potter.
And there's some like level of like whimsy and majesty to the thing, or perhaps it's likea classic Bojack horseman route where the human part isn't necessarily the head.
(25:04):
See also dog man looking at you.
But this monstrous figure is described as being half human, half animal, and having largemonstrous claws and glowing eyes.
but this name derives in many ways, and not only as we're gonna see, because it is coveredin bright pink hair.
(25:32):
On that regard, with the long claws, glowing eyes, and bright pink hair, they've prettymuch described some strange gender-confused Portland weirdo.
I wouldn't want to run into that either.
But this monster was seemingly completely off the radar until the 1990s when it began toappear in town stories and news reports in South African townships.
(25:56):
Tales of a scary pink monster, half man, half beast,
who lurks in hiding and whose favorite target is young girls.
So if you need to go out, you better watch out.
This creepy monster might just be waiting for you.
But this is privy.
(26:17):
So we're talking about Pinky Pinky because Pinky Pinky waits for his targets in bathrooms.
He waits for lone school girls and young women to stumble in where he will.
And to make the whole thing worse and honestly just weirder, Pinky Pinky likes, I guess,pink underwear like weird, weird and bad.
(26:40):
Like, come on, bud.
We got to leave the, you got to leave the underwear out of it.
If you're making, if you're making a scary story or a horror movie or anything like that,you got to leave underwear details out of it.
It's not important.
But you can say pinky pinky.
Like he's got pink hair, he likes pink underwear.
(27:03):
It's already creepy enough that he's hiding out in like girls bathrooms waiting for women,but that he has like a type of underwear is it's very perverted, like pervert.
It gives big old pervert vibes.
Pinky pinky likes the color pink.
(27:24):
But this bathroom monster is gross and bad and kind of menacing.
And it's weird because it's not tied to ancient spirits or stories or phenomenon that tryto explain some bathroom related reality.
Pinky Pinky is a direct result of apartheid anxieties in young women in South Africa andtheir parents and adults in their lives wanting
(27:53):
to protect them from harm.
It arose out of a culture whose demons and spirits are tied to locations and haunt certainplaces.
And so to help the young girls be safe, thus arose the tale of Pinky Pinky, the creaturewho lurks in bathrooms.
(28:14):
And what's scarier is I believe Pinky Pinky attacks happened, but they weren't PinkyPinkies.
They were domestic assaults, sexual assaults and kidnappings.
When little girls in the area ask their parents or their teacher where their friend went,who never came back from the bathroom, they could detail the horrors of a violent
(28:42):
kidnapping and the abuse and assault that likely ensued.
Or they can package those things in a monster who stands in for that, who is theembodiment of those anxieties.
and who hopefully would scare other young girls enough to steer them away from bathroomsin that area or remind them to not go alone.
(29:12):
Pinky Pinky is the South African toilet monster that the Apartheid
This has been another spooky installment of Privy.
Thank you so much for being here.
Check us out online, privy-cast.com.
(29:33):
Send us an email, privycast.gmail.com.
We'd love to hear from you.
Leave us a rating or review.
The five-star options are preferred.
You can leave us a Spotify and Apple podcast, and we will donate a dollar for every ratingor review left to Wounded Warriors and Living Water International.
As a reminder to keep pooping in the free world, that free world was not always free.
and in pursuit of cleaner water for all.
(29:53):
Not everybody has clean water, but everybody should.
We'd also encourage you to follow us on social media at privycast.
Share the show with a friend online.
Say, hey, this man talked about bad South African racism and a strange pervert pinkmonster while wearing a crap wizard hat in a bathroom.
(30:16):
Share the show with friend.
We'd love for you to do so.
You can follow me.
I'm at Owlet7.
My son and I have been opening Pokemon cards together.
If you want to go check out those pack openings, we got a bunch of pack openings, go checkout RowletRipsTCG.
If you Instagram that at RowletRips or at RowletRipsTCG, you should find it.
(30:36):
It's also on TikTok.
Give it a follow.
My son would love to see that folks are watching along.
It's fun for him.
This brings us to the end.
of another episode of Preview.
Thank you to Kevin and Puddington for the use of your music.
Weird thing YouTube's doing.
go check out their stuff.
Kevin, McCloud, and Puddington Bear.
(30:57):
If I put their links down below, YouTube gets all grumpy right now.
So we're not going to do that.
This brings us to the end of another episode of Preview.
Thank you so much for being here.
Keep pooping in the free world.
Own your stank.
Fight those pinky pinkies.
And now, as always, don't forget to flush.
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