New four-part documentary series What We Know, hosted by Eugene Khoza and directed by the team behind Chasing the Sun, launches this Heritage Month to answer the question every South African has asked at least once while watching a trophy lift: how does a country that carries this much still produce this many champions?
Load shedding. Unemployment. A currency that never quite settles. By rights, none of it should leave room for greatness. And yet South Africa keeps winning; Rugby World Cups, cricket tours, MotoGP podiums, Olympic medals and world titles in sports most countries cannot even spell. Nobody has ever properly explained why. This Heritage Month, Red Bull tries with the launch of What We Know, a four-part documentary series that sends comedian and broadcaster Eugene Khoza across the country to find the answer, and to give South Africans something to feel proud of, together.
Khoza splits his time between Joburg and New York, working alongside Trevor Noah and interviewing some of the world’s sharpest minds. From that vantage point, he has noticed something. South Africa is on a run, against every odds stacked in front of it. So, he set off on a journey through the country, pairing up unlikely names, Springboks with skateboarders, MotoGP racers with hockey players, Proteas with e-sports pros, to interrogate the same question from every angle: what is it about being South African that keeps producing the best in the world?
THE BIG QUESTION
Every episode of What We Know builds around a different theory: creativity, community, the underdog mentality, and diversity. Khoza does not arrive with an answer. He gathers South Africans who have actually lived it, athletes, artists, comedians, coaches, and lets the conversation do the work. There is no script and no single hero. Just people who have made it to the top, sitting around a fire or a kitchen table, comparing notes on how they got there. As the series puts it: what if South Africa’s hardest conditions are exactly what makes its champions? There is no better month to ask it. Heritage Month is when the country stops to remember what it is made of, and this September, What We Know puts that answer on screen.
FIRST UP: EPISODE ONE, CREATIVITY
The series opens in Johannesburg, where spinning champion SamSam Thubane and Springbok fullback Damian Willemse show Khoza what it looks like to turn instinct into art, joined by b-girl Courtnaé Paul and skateboarder Boipelo Awuah. Around the table, comedian Jason Goliath, TV personality Lerato Phago and artist Karabo Poppy unpack why South Africans seem to default to creativity under pressure rather than in spite of it.
The episode’s fifth lead is aerobatic pilot Pat Davidson, a six-time national champion who has flown for South Africa at the World Aerobatic Championships in Osaka. Before he pulls nine Gs in a routine, Davidson plans every manoeuvre by hand, sketching his flight sequence on paper and writing over it in a private shorthand no one else on the circuit can read. “You write it down, it goes into your head,” he says. It’s a habit that once saved his life, when an engine failure at thirty feet left him with no time to think and only instinct to fly on.
Eugene Khoza with Sam Sam Thubane | Image credit Tyrone Bradley, Red Bull Content Pool
A CAST BUILT DIFFERENT
Episode one is only the start. Over the course of the series, Khoza sits down with Springbok captain Siya Kolisi, Proteas players Kagiso Rabada, Temba Bavuma and Laura Wolvaardt, two time MotoGP race winner Brad Binder, mountain bike world champion Greg Minnaar, professional surfer Jordy Smith, ultra runner Ryan Sandes, 800m runner Prudence Sekgodiso, strongman Rayno Nel, hockey international Thati Zulu, Mamelodi Sundowns midfielder Themba Zwane, and a supporting cast that spans rugby, cricket, motorsport, athletics, gaming and comedy. Sixteen champions, five disciplines, one flag. It is the kind of guest list that does not usually sit in the same room, let alone the same series, and this Heritage Month, it sits together on South African screens.
MEET THE TEAM
Greg Lomas and Colwyn Thomas (Directors): The director duo behind Chasing the Sun, widely regarded as the greatest rugby documentary ever made, take the reins on What We Know, bringing the same access driven, character led approach to a new set of South African stories. “South Africa and South African’s ability to compete and challenge the best athletes and teams in the world can’t just come down to skill, ability and training – that’s because we are under-resourced comparatively with the countries who are the best in the world. The premise of the show is that it makes sense that there is something else that contributes to our ability and so one needs to investigate the characters beyond their ability,” commented the directors. “This investigation means meeting their families, their friends and other important influences as well as visiting locations that have shaped them in some way as we try to understand what is the thing that gives them a superpower essentially,” they added.
Eugene Khoza and Brad Binder | Image credit Tyrone Bradley, Red Bull Content Pool
WHEN TO WATCH
What We Know arrives this Heritage Month. Episode one lands on SABC1 on Wednesday, 24 September, Heritage Day itself at 22h00, before the series continues weekly: episode two on 1 October, episode three on 8 October, and episode four, the finale, on 15 October.
For more information on What We Know, please click here. Please click here for the teaser clip.
