Latest / Privycast / Ep. 182 Pinky Pinky - The South African Apartheid Bathroom Monster
Transcript
- 0:05An apartheid was condemned by the UN.
- 0:07You know what?
- 0:07Thanks, UN, for weighing in there.
- 0:09I'm glad you did that.
- 0:11I was really on the edge of my seat wondering, I wonder if this is right.
- 0:15I better wait for the UN to denounce or approve it.
- 0:25Welcome back to Privy.
- 0:28Privy is a podcast about bathrooms recorded from my home bathroom.
- 0:35I'm your host, Hunter Hoover, and I love bathrooms.
- 0:39Welcome back everyone.
- 0:40Thank you so much for being here and welcome back to our second 2025 episode celebrating Spooky Season.
- 0:48Spooky Season, if you missed the first episode, go listen to our episode about the Golgothan.
- 0:54Spooky season is...
- 0:58A celebration, you know, it's high brow.
- 1:00It's high brow.
- 1:02And I noted this last time, but it's a combination of the idea of spooky and poo.
- 1:07It's things that are bathroom related that are also kind of scary in nature.
- 1:13Last time we talked about the Golgothan, a scary poo monster.
- 1:17And in doing so, we learned about an old movie that I probably should have seen by now, but have not.
- 1:25And.
- 1:26We've got another bathroom themed monster for today.
- 1:30But before we do that, I'm going to again, take just a brief moment of your time to tell you about Twist Season.
- 1:38It is officially halfway through Twist Season by the time you are listening to this episode.
- 1:45And Twist Season for those who are unaware, go check it out on social media, Justice for the Twist, but it's centered around
- 1:55The idea that the colloquially named Monster Mash song, which is very popular this time year, is unjustly and inappropriately named such as it should be called the Transylvania
- 2:08Twist 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
- 2:21happened to it and
- 2:23We are told by Bobby Boris and the Crypt Keeping Five that they are, that it has been renamed unjustly and unfairly to the Transylvania Twist.
- 2:32Justice for the Twist at its heart is centered on the idea that the person who makes something, it's about copyright.
- 2:42It's about plagiarism.
- 2:44It's reacting against the idea that somebody can just stroll on in to somebody's creative piece and just rename it whatever they want.
- 2:52We don't do that.
- 2:53We don't want to do that here.
- 2:56And so last time, you know, and go, so again, correct people if they incorrectly call the song Monster Mash, make sure like you say, it's actually called the Transylvania Twist.
- 3:09Post about the hashtag justice for the twist, hashtag justice for the twist online.
- 3:14You can also use hashtag down with the mash, but justice for the twist got a good ring.
- 3:19And share justice for the twist material that you see.
- 3:22It is propaganda.
- 3:23Sometimes you quiet.
- 3:25The opposition via propaganda, that's a-
- 3:34Now, on with spooky season.
- 3:37uh Last time we talked about the Golgothan and I think I'm gonna don my poop witch's hat for the show.
- 3:50Happy spooky season.
- 3:51Nothing spookier uh than a poo hat on a podcaster.
- 3:58But we have another bathroom monster that we need to talk about today.
- 4:03And in order to talk about this monster, we are going to need to contextualize ourselves in a big way.
- 4:12And you might hear that and ask why.
- 4:16Why do we need to contextualize ourselves?
- 4:18I mean, like, is it really necessary for us to do so?
- 4:24Why can't we just...
- 4:25talk about this bathroom monster and get on with our day.
- 4:29First, I don't, don't you want to learn something?
- 4:32Like I just put on a poop emoji hat.
- 4:36Don't you want to learn something from me?
- 4:40I mean, I can just come right out and bury the lead, but where's the showmanship in that?
- 4:44Like, where's the fun?
- 4:45Don't we want to have some fun?
- 4:47We want to learn something along the way here.
- 4:49We 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.
- 4:56I'll put out a five minute episode.
- 4:57Watch me.
- 4:58There's nothing to do with it.
- 5:00Let's put some effort in here.
- 5:02I've got a poop emoji hat.
- 5:04Let's put some effort in.
- 5:05Second, imagine Frankenstein's monster.
- 5:09You got Frankenstein's monster, the bolts coming out of his head.
- 5:12If Frankenstein's monster in your head, I'll imagine Frankenstein's monster without the context of the like village and the crazed doctor and all the other events of the story.
- 5:23mean, the context that we find a monster in sets the tone and lends credibility to the monster.
- 5:34And so I hope today to set the tone and lend some credibility.
- 5:39to a very unknown monster to me.
- 5:42And to do so, we need to talk about the early 1900s.
- 5:45If you're like me and you know nothing about early 1900s in South Africa, don't worry.
- 5:53I'm going to give you the purest version of a crash course on South Africa that you're going to find, I think, on these interwebs.
- 6:00I'm wearing a poo hat.
- 6:02It's going to be fun.
- 6:04And by fun, I mean frustrating because there's a lot of like bad racism.
- 6:10which was unfortunate.
- 6:12In short, as we approach the 1900s South Africa had long been affected by the colonization of European settlers.
- 6:20This included, but is not limited to the Dutch East India Company.
- 6:24Remember, we talked about them back when we, when we tried the cat poop coffee.
- 6:28Go check our episode out on the Koopie Luwak and the cat poop coffee is actually pretty good.
- 6:34Um, but these settlers known as Afrikaners
- 6:39expanded more inland and clashed heavily with the African people who were there.
- 6:46What are we waiting for?
- 6:47It's crisp.
- 6:48Little lime polar seltzer for our date.
- 6:50It's so refreshing.
- 6:53It just refreshes me.
- 6:54In the 1800s, Britain took control of the Cape.
- 6:58That's the, that's the bottom part like this, of South Africa.
- 7:02Their policies pushing for and enforcing pretty strict racial hierarchies in the region, like bad luck Britain.
- 7:10The biggest thing this did was limited land ownership for black South Africans in the area.
- 7:16This was made even worse when there was discovered to be diamonds and gold in the region with rich deposits in the area.
- 7:25And it led to further subjugation.
- 7:27It's the classic like, Hey, we can make some money on this thing.
- 7:30We better like make life awful for people in order for us to make some money on it.
- 7:34Subjugation occurred against the black Africans when the white Afrikaners
- 7:40and settlers wanted cheap labor.
- 7:45and sought to further limit the black Africans work opportunities in the area.
- 7:51It's a classic like competition makes me a total butthole to my neighbor.
- 7:55Like that's the short version there.
- 7:57These colonial tensions laid a system which rose up out of it and would come to color and impact the areas South Africa for some time into the future.
- 8:07And I would argue even into today.
- 8:11That is a system.
- 8:12that became known as apartheid.
- 8:17I have to be honest, apartheid is one of those words that I haven't heard a bunch of times.
- 8:24Like I've heard it enough that I know of it.
- 8:28And I know that it's a racial thing and that it's kind of bad, but.
- 8:35Before preparing for this episode, if you'd have walked up to me and said, Hunter, I want you to explain to me apartheid.
- 8:41I would have said, I don't know.
- 8:46Ignorance, yeah, here it is.
- 8:51couldn't for the life of me tell you what it was, where it occurred, or even attempt to spell the word correctly.
- 8:57Thank goodness for Google AutoCorrect.
- 9:00But in short,
- 9:04Apartheid is a lot more than just colonialism.
- 9:09In 1913, the Natives Land Act reserved most of the farmable and desirable land of South Africa for use by the white people in the area.
- 9:20This accounted for almost 90 % of South African land.
- 9:24And to do so, they force black Africans in the region onto reserves.
- 9:29Now we're going to talk a little bit about the laws which accomplish this.
- 9:33Laws were passed that restricted black Africans movement throughout the country.
- 9:37So they were stuck in these reserves.
- 9:39Segregation in South Africa became the norm.
- 9:43And by the 30s and 40s, schools, hospitals, and even entire neighborhoods and housing developments were segregated by race.
- 9:56Let me tell you about what we learned about this here in the United States.
- 10:00This is bad and it doesn't work.
- 10:03This made me start to ask, how is this not just segregation?
- 10:07Like how is apartheid different than just like segregation?
- 10:15To discuss that, we need to discuss life after World War II.
- 10:20During this time, the white Afrikaners were worried they were going to lose economic and political dominance to the black African and English speaking whites.
- 10:30To work against these fears, the National Party in South Africa campaigned on a platform that focused on a system called apartheid, which is Afrikan, meaning
- 10:44So the word translates to the idea of being separated or apart.
- 10:50This apartheid or apartness movement had the goal of continuing and having the government foster and enforce segregation to ensure white dominance in the area.
- 11:02This was made even more stark in the region when this party won the election 1948, which they were doomed to do as black Africans were not able to vote.
- 11:14So of course, of course they won because the opposition wasn't even allowed to vote.
- 11:19Why vote?
- 11:21Why even do a vote?
- 11:25That's like, hey guys, let's see what everybody thinks.
- 11:29Do they want us in control?
- 11:32No, no, only our friends are allowed to vote.
- 11:34It's like a crappy high school popularity contest, king and queen vote.
- 11:39This event brought in apartheid to the region and the times which followed were grim.
- 11:45The Population Registration Act registered the population.
- 11:50I know, it's in the name.
- 11:51The naming conventions on some of these things are
- 11:54just so on the nose, it's crazy.
- 11:56Wow, right?
- 11:58Like most of the most on the nose version of racism you can really get is like, hey, let's register people to the government according to their race.
- 12:10This was exasperated by the Group Areas Act in the same year, which sought to further segregate residential districts by race, where those who didn't fit the makeup of a
- 12:22community
- 12:23would be forcibly removed and placed in a community which matched their descriptions.
- 12:29So, not only did they have to register, they were forcibly removed based on their race and forced into residential groups that agreed with their registered race in the government.
- 12:43This spilled over into the schools and public facilities, which were officially segregated or aparted
- 12:51If you will, 1953.
- 12:54But it's at this moment in 1948, when the national party came into power based on that fake vote, that we speak about the apartheid movement being a thing, which has officially
- 13:05started.
- 13:06It's not good.
- 13:07Boiling tensions took a huge turn in the 1960s.
- 13:12For a long time in the region, there were tensions and groups working to undermine and dismantle the ideology.
- 13:20of apartheid.
- 13:21Key activists such as Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela were crucial in organizing often peaceful strikes, protests, and civil disobedience to speak against the unjust laws of
- 13:34apartheid.
- 13:36Things came to an impasse as they always do when someone is killed because of these things.
- 13:44In 1960, the Sharpville Massacre marked a turning point
- 13:48for the struggle regarding apartheid.
- 13:52This event was deemed such as a massacre because a group of unarmed black protesters who were speaking out against apartheid ideals were gunned down by a group of white police
- 14:06officers killing 69 people and injuring 180 others.
- 14:10Now lest you hear this and go, ah, this is the same.
- 14:14This is not the same as what we've got going on.
- 14:18It's not the same.
- 14:21On the whole, our police force in the United States today in the year 2025 of our Lord is good, helpful, and they do what is right by all of the people.
- 14:32Now, are there crooked cops?
- 14:34Yes.
- 14:35And we should do away with them.
- 14:39But I would argue and I would wager, I don't know this, I don't have a stat on this, but I would wager for every crooked cop, there's 20 to 30, ah I would say up to 50 cops who
- 14:54exist that want to do good, that want to serve and protect, and that have made society and the cities and the communities that they are in better because of it.
- 15:07I am merely presenting
- 15:09this violence as a historical event known as the Sharpville Massacre.
- 15:16The rest of the world heard these shots and they condemned South Africa's apartheid policies and further solidified an anti-apartheid movement.
- 15:28The government could no longer turn a blind eye to these things.
- 15:33They couldn't get away with it any longer.
- 15:35Like things had gone on too much and the world had seen it.
- 15:41South Africa was slapped with sanctions.
- 15:43Conflict rose up from within.
- 15:46and there was a shift from peaceful protest to armed resistance.
- 15:52Many leaders in the anti-apartheid movements as a result were jailed and others went into hiding.
- 16:00One, those in the National Congress and the Communist Party were arrested for their apartheid ties.
- 16:08Notably, Nelson Mandela and seven others from the group were sentenced to life in prison.
- 16:14Which Mandela famously said, quote, it's a cause that he was ready to die for.
- 16:20It's a tough look again.
- 16:21And indeed the world was looking on.
- 16:27At some point, some of these things start to feel like the mouthy kid in class.
- 16:33that thinks he's got something real smart to say.
- 16:37He thinks he's got some like clever witticism and that he's got some funny thing to say.
- 16:42So he starts to mouth off and make his point and he cracks some sidelines jokes at the teacher's expense and he thinks he's getting one.
- 16:50But then the teacher stands firm and continues to speak sense in the situation.
- 16:55And eventually when that happens, the rest of the kids in the room start to look at the kid like, would you just shut up?
- 17:01Like just shut up.
- 17:03That mouthy kid is the racist apartheid movement of South Africa.
- 17:09Like the rest of the world is looking on going, hey guys, this is not the move.
- 17:16These seclusions and isolations from the world increased in the 1980s.
- 17:22It's kind of like, let's slap them with a little flavor of what it's like.
- 17:27And apartheid was condemned by the UN.
- 17:30You know what?
- 17:30Thanks UN for weighing in there.
- 17:32I'm glad you did that.
- 17:33I was really on the edge of my seat wondering, I wonder if this is right.
- 17:38I better wait for the UN to denounce or approve it.
- 17:42Thanks UN.
- 17:42I mean, at least you made the right choice.
- 17:44You've kind of not come down on the right choice a couple of times very recently in our time, but like, I'm glad that you figured out that like racially segregating and targeting
- 17:55a racial group and trying to remove that racial group from their own, you know.
- 18:01Area is actually wrong.
- 18:02Thank you for figuring that out.
- 18:05Maybe figure it out again.
- 18:06In time, the white businesses now fully separated by the rest of the country and community, and in many ways the world because of their own policies, began to fail
- 18:17economically.
- 18:18Hit them where it hurts.
- 18:20Their checkbook.
- 18:211989 and 1990 would mark the turning point.
- 18:25New president F.W.
- 18:27Clerk realized change was needed.
- 18:31As these policies of apartheid were no longer sustainable and not just sustainable, but I would argue morally acceptable.
- 18:42A seemingly poetic gesture, the man sentenced to death in prison, willing to die for the cause, was set free in 1990.
- 18:52Nelson Mandela walked free after 27 years in jail.
- 18:59Banned organizations were legalized and negotiations between the governments and these liberation movements started.
- 19:07Mandela and the president of South Africa, the bloke that I mentioned before, F.W.
- 19:14Clerk, shared the Nobel Peace Prize for helping end the apartheid movement in 1993.
- 19:22One year later, free election where all races could vote.
- 19:26Wherein Nelson Mandela won by a landslide and became the first black president of South Africa.
- 19:33In Mandela's four to five year term, he worked to further dismantle the apartheid stain that lay on his country.
- 19:41And though they made a lot of progress, racial disputes and human rights concerns were still at large.
- 19:48And that begs the question, like what was life like?
- 19:51You don't just wave a wand.
- 19:53The crap wizard has arrived.
- 19:55to wave his wand and expect the long held concerns that people had grown to know and built their society on to just magically disappear overnight.
- 20:06Things are going to take time.
- 20:08And while they do, you learn how to function in order to make it as the new system.
- 20:22So we'll note it's spooky season and this is privy.
- 20:27This isn't some history pundit show.
- 20:29God knows there's enough of them.
- 20:31I don't think there's many podcasts about bathrooms, but I'll tell you this.
- 20:37There's plenty of historical commentary podcasts.
- 20:41The internet's rife with them.
- 20:43But how many podcasts does the host put on a crap wizard hat?
- 20:48And I'll note, I don't really think that historical commentary is needed.
- 20:53about apartheid, like it seems pretty awful.
- 20:57I said, I think in modern days, we've seen the pendulum swing back and we've seen oppression of white South Africans in modern times.
- 21:07One of the things that happens in the landscape of great social change is you have to develop rules and ideas to keep yourself and those you love safe.
- 21:16When it comes to children, sometimes the way you do so is through stories.
- 21:22And one of the most effective types of stories is scary stories.
- 21:28You know how many times a scary movie scene flashes through my mind as I walk through an empty house, a dark building, a lonely hallway.
- 21:38And it's like, huh, what's the most horrifying and terrible thing that could happen to me right now?
- 21:43And the image in my brain is usually one that has been put there via some horror story or scary movie that coupled with the reminder that
- 21:53They couldn't just magically remake all the infrastructure in the area.
- 21:56Once segregated bathrooms in segregated regions were left uncamped and often in poor condition.
- 22:05These could be even just mere pit latrine privies, if you will, and were not connected to the building.
- 22:13They were like a separate shack and were far away.
- 22:18And if people needed to use the bathroom in these public spaces in schools,
- 22:22They would have to often walk outside sometimes at night, sometimes in the dark to do so.
- 22:27The infrastructure for the bathrooms were not clean and with less traffic because of their poorly kept conditions, it increased the danger of these bathrooms.
- 22:41One tragic part of apartheid injustice that this is a trigger warning.
- 22:47So if, if discussions of essay are,
- 22:51not for you, I would recommend that you skip the rest of this episode.
- 22:57It's not going to be a lot of conversation, but it is mentioned.
- 23:02One tragic part of apartheid injustice was the sexual violence against women and sometimes children.
- 23:10Warnings and other things abounded to help kids and women stay safe in the time after and during apartheid.
- 23:20That would end the regular proliferation of news media helped enforce these worries.
- 23:26And also, while regular free speech was often limited in apartheid South Africa,
- 23:32The tool of good storytelling could be used and tell stories about hard truths they were unable otherwise to speak about.
- 23:40This concoction has all piled up in Africa where it just so happens they have a knack for having these very specific demons and spirits, many of which are tied specifically to
- 23:52certain locations and places.
- 23:55So what are we getting at here?
- 23:58This episode and the big reveal as we move to the end is our scary monster for spooky season.
- 24:06As the story goes, parents began to tell their kids cautionary tales related to going out to the bathroom at night or alone, or leaving the safety of the school to walk to the
- 24:18bathroom.
- 24:19Warnings of monsters that would get you sprouted up.
- 24:23Then...
- 24:24when the bathrooms themselves started to prove too dangerous for young women to access for any reason.
- 24:31The tale of Pinky Pinky.
- 24:34Pinky Pinky is said to be a terrifying half human, half animal hybrid being.
- 24:43On a note, sometimes we hear half human, half animal and we think like, it's a cute little Mr.
- 24:49Tumnus or it's like one of those centaurs from Harry Potter.
- 24:54And there's some like level of like whimsy and majesty to the thing, or perhaps it's like a classic Bojack horseman route where the human part isn't necessarily the head.
- 25:04See also dog man looking at you.
- 25:07But this monstrous figure is described as being half human, half animal, and having large monstrous claws and glowing eyes.
- 25:20but this name derives in many ways, and not only as we're gonna see, because it is covered in bright pink hair.
- 25:32On that regard, with the long claws, glowing eyes, and bright pink hair, they've pretty much described some strange gender-confused Portland weirdo.
- 25:41I wouldn't want to run into that either.
- 25:44But this monster was seemingly completely off the radar until the 1990s when it began to appear in town stories and news reports in South African townships.
- 25:56Tales of a scary pink monster, half man, half beast,
- 26:01who lurks in hiding and whose favorite target is young girls.
- 26:06So if you need to go out, you better watch out.
- 26:09This creepy monster might just be waiting for you.
- 26:14But this is privy.
- 26:17So we're talking about Pinky Pinky because Pinky Pinky waits for his targets in bathrooms.
- 26:24He waits for lone school girls and young women to stumble in where he will.
- 26:31And to make the whole thing worse and honestly just weirder, Pinky Pinky likes, I guess, pink underwear like weird, weird and bad.
- 26:40Like, come on, bud.
- 26:42We got to leave the, you got to leave the underwear out of it.
- 26:46If 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.
- 26:54It's not important.
- 26:58But you can say pinky pinky.
- 26:59Like he's got pink hair, he likes pink underwear.
- 27:03It'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.
- 27:16It gives big old pervert vibes.
- 27:19Pinky pinky likes the color pink.
- 27:24But this bathroom monster is gross and bad and kind of menacing.
- 27:30And it's weird because it's not tied to ancient spirits or stories or phenomenon that try to explain some bathroom related reality.
- 27:42Pinky Pinky is a direct result of apartheid anxieties in young women in South Africa and their parents and adults in their lives wanting
- 27:53to protect them from harm.
- 27:56It arose out of a culture whose demons and spirits are tied to locations and haunt certain places.
- 28:02And so to help the young girls be safe, thus arose the tale of Pinky Pinky, the creature who lurks in bathrooms.
- 28:14And what's scarier is I believe Pinky Pinky attacks happened, but they weren't Pinky Pinkies.
- 28:24They were domestic assaults, sexual assaults and kidnappings.
- 28:31When 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
- 28:42kidnapping and the abuse and assault that likely ensued.
- 28:47Or they can package those things in a monster who stands in for that, who is the embodiment of those anxieties.
- 29:00and who hopefully would scare other young girls enough to steer them away from bathrooms in that area or remind them to not go alone.
- 29:12Pinky Pinky is the South African toilet monster that the Apartheid
- 29:24This has been another spooky installment of Privy.
- 29:28Thank you so much for being here.
- 29:30Check us out online, privy-cast.com.
- 29:33Send us an email, privycast.gmail.com.
- 29:35We'd love to hear from you.
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- 29:47As a reminder to keep pooping in the free world, that free world was not always free.
- 29:51and in pursuit of cleaner water for all.
- 29:53Not everybody has clean water, but everybody should.
- 29:57We'd also encourage you to follow us on social media at privycast.
- 30:00Share the show with a friend online.
- 30:03Say, hey, this man talked about bad South African racism and a strange pervert pink monster while wearing a crap wizard hat in a bathroom.
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- 30:21My son and I have been opening Pokemon cards together.
- 30:24If you want to go check out those pack openings, we got a bunch of pack openings, go check out RowletRipsTCG.
- 30:31If you Instagram that at RowletRips or at RowletRipsTCG, you should find it.
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- 30:37Give it a follow.
- 30:38My son would love to see that folks are watching along.
- 30:42It's fun for him.
- 30:44This brings us to the end.
- 30:46of another episode of Preview.
- 30:47Thank you to Kevin and Puddington for the use of your music.
- 30:50Weird thing YouTube's doing.
- 30:52go check out their stuff.
- 30:55Kevin, McCloud, and Puddington Bear.
- 30:57If I put their links down below, YouTube gets all grumpy right now.
- 31:01So we're not going to do that.
- 31:02This brings us to the end of another episode of Preview.
- 31:04Thank you so much for being here.
- 31:05Keep pooping in the free world.
- 31:06Own your stank.
- 31:07Fight those pinky pinkies.
- 31:09And now, as always, don't forget to flush.