NEW YORK, HERE I COME
Broadcast queen Redi Tlhabi has said goodbye to 702 and is heading to America with her family to take up a fellowship
SHE rushes into the restaurant, giant coffee cup in hand, and apologises for being a few minutes late. Life has been a whirlwind since she hung up her microphone at talk radio station 702 after 12 years on air and everybody’s been wanting a piece of her.
“Thank heavens for coffee,” Redi Tlhabi says, taking a sip. “I need two cups backto-back before I start thinking!”
Eyes across the eatery in Hyde Park,Johannesburg, swivel towards her as she settles down. She might be a radio star but after all these years in the game her face is as recognisable as her voice.
The feisty broadcaster’s many fans were heartbroken when she announced she was leaving the station to take up a fellowship in the United States. On her last day her name trended on Twitter for hours and even the EFF and the ANC released statements bidding her farewell and praising her work. DA leader Mmusi Maimane sent her a private message.
Her career has been quite a ride, Redi (39) says. “I said to my bosses at 702, ‘You know, in all the years I’ve been here I’ve never woken up and felt like doing something else’.”
But, happy as she was, she felt restless in the past two years. “I kept thinking, ‘What else is out there? What else can I do? This can’t be the end of my journey’.”
Receiving her long-service award in 2015 after 10 years with the station triggered a change in her mindset. “I was taken aback – the years had gone by so
quickly. I was freaked out, traumatised! I knew I couldn’t be where I was for another 10 years.”
She could have hung in for a few more years if she were a little younger, she adds. But the big four-o is looming next year and she worried it might be too late to do all the things she wants to do.
And so a whole new chapter begins.
REDI believes her daughters, Neo (3) and Khumo (11 months), are the right age to be uprooted. “It’s not that change isn’t traumatic for a four-year-old,” she says. “But it’s better to remove a child from nursery school than from primary school.”
Which is why she readily accepted the offer of a fellowship in economic journalism from Columbia University in New York.
Her husband, Brian Tlhabi, a medical doctor who runs a private practice in Soweto, will join the family in America and hopes to work in the field of TB and Aids research.
The Tlhabis plan to leave in June 2018 and Redi will use the time between now and then to shoot documentaries on issues affecting people globally. But first she wants to finish the book she’s been writing for the past two years on Fezeka Kuzwayo, the woman better known as Khwezi, Jacob Zuma’s rape accuser.
“This book has taken everything out of me,” she says. “It was intense – hers was such a complicated life. But it’s also about things I feel strongly about, such as sexual violence and male entitlement of woman’s bodies.”
When Kwezi died last year it threw her, Redi says, and she needed to recharge – something she couldn’t do if she was sitting behind a microphone every day.
RShe’s determined to live a life her grandmother and mother were deprived of because of apartheid. “My grandmother has lived in the same house in Orlando East [Soweto] and that’s where she’s going to die. She’s had a beautiful life but I’m a child of democracy and I have to be brave enough to test my life on a global platform.”
Redi, who often took politicians to task on her radio show, says she’ll try to steer clear of political stories in her documentary work.
“We’re bogged down with ANC affairs and state capture, as we should be. But what other stories are we missing? There are a lot of stories I want to tell – for instance, about how Ebola is affecting women. My feet are itching to see if I can open a couple of doors.”
As excited as she is for the future, she says it was hard to leave 702. “It’s difficult to walk away from a place where you’re valued. But maybe that’s when you need to leave – when you’re too comfortable.”
Of all her colleagues and friends at the station she’ll miss Thomas Manamela, her technical producer, the most. He was her pillar of strength in all her years on air. All she needed to do was look up and see him for her confidence to be boosted.
Thomas tried to talk her out of leaving and now often sends her WhatsApp messages telling her how much he misses her. “And I say to him, ‘I miss you every day’,” she says. EDI’S husband also tried to talk her out of leaving 702 – he enjoyed turning on the radio, hearing his wife’s voice and finding out where she was coming from, she says.
She’s going to miss her listeners and the difference 702 made in people’s lives. “But I’m not going to miss the on-air interaction with sexists and racists,” she adds.
Redi didn’t realise what a powerhouse she was until later in her career when she’d go to a restaurant or grocery store and people would engage her in conversation.
“Or at the opening of parliament when politicians would come to me and say, ‘The other day you criticised us and you were right’,” she says.
She also came under fire from people who accused her of being anti-ANC or anti-Zuma. “Of course I’m anti what they’re doing! And anti-Zuma? Yes, a resounding yes! I mean, duh!”
Redi and family will visit New York next month to check out schools for the girls and neighbourhoods to live in. “My friends keep saying, ‘We’re going to miss you.’ And I say, ‘Blah-blah-blah’,” she says. “Everyone is so busy we don’t see each other even when we’re in Joburg.”
Motherhood is top priority for Redi but she has a team of “special people” – her term for the three nannies she employs – to help her “build a healthy family”.
“I need to write, I need to read and I need to have a marriage,” she says. A day in the life of Redi Tlhabi is hectic – even without 702. She’s up at 4.30 am to go for a run (she has several Comrades Marathons under her belt) and is home by 6.15 am. After a quick shower she goes through her emails, then joins Neo for breakfast at 7am while baby Khumo crawls around.
Brian takes Neo to nursery school and Redi then locks herself in her study and writes.
She picks Neo up from school at 12.45 pm, then takes her to ballet or swimming lessons.
Afternoons are when she schedules meetings and brainstorming sessions and she’s home around 5.30 pm to cook supper while the nannies wash the kids.
Brian gets home around 7 pm and spends some time with the kids before they go to bed. Then he and Redi catch up.
She’s in a good space, she says. “When I woke up on the Friday after I left 702, I thought, ‘I loved 702 but I love my life now.’ I’m ready to launch again.”
‘I knew I couldn’t be where I was for another 10 years’