Mandisa Jackson: Hillbrow Radio and the Power of Community Action
Mandisa Jackson speaks openly about surviving an abusive marriage, imprisonment, having stage 3 cancer, and finding purpose in supporting others. Through Hillbrow Radio and the community volunteers she calls her GBV Warriors, she helps women facing violence, takes anti-bullying programmes into schools and brings neighbours together across nationalities. She tells us about her faith, the need for financial independence and what it takes to turn concern for your community into practical action.
Listen to the conversation
Behind the Conversation
by Babette Gallard
I keep thinking about Mandisa Jackson arriving at Hillbrow Radio to tell her story and ending up helping to run the place. Something about that seems to explain her: she sees what needs doing and gets involved. Having survived an abusive marriage, prison and cancer, she has plenty of reasons to concentrate on her own life. Instead, she is accompanying frightened women to the police station, sending her GBV Warriors door to door and working with children who are learning violence at home. I loved her account of arriving at the police station to a reception of “here comes trouble”. You can imagine the determination that follows. But what moved me most was her refusal to make someone’s nationality a condition of helping them. Listening to her, I wondered how many people are left without help simply because nobody will go with them. Mandisa goes.