Latest / Ridiculous History / CLASSIC: The Story of Max, South Africa's Famous, Crime-fighting Gorilla

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CLASSIC: The Story of Max, South Africa's Famous, Crime-fighting Gorilla · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome Ridiculous Historians to this week's classic episode. If you're
0:05
Speaker 1: hearing this when it publishes, welcome to December seventh, twenty
0:10
Speaker 1: twenty four, Joined as always with my super producer, mister
0:15
Speaker 1: Max Williams.
0:17
Speaker 2: I'm guessing I am going to be the second most
0:20
Speaker 2: famous Max on this episode.
0:22
Speaker 3: I don't know, man, don't you know what history is? Weird?
0:25
Speaker 1: And dare I say ridiculous? It's Ben Bullen here with
0:29
Speaker 1: Max Williams, our faithful correspondence. Mister Noel Brown is adventuring
0:37
Speaker 1: and Max, I am so glad that you are here
0:40
Speaker 1: with us. In this intro to our classic episode, we
0:44
Speaker 1: were talking about it a little bit off air. This
0:48
Speaker 1: is the story of another Max.
0:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, this one's interesting because I've heard this one referenced
0:55
Speaker 2: a lot, so you know, this is before I worked
0:57
Speaker 2: on the show. But this is what This is our
1:00
Speaker 2: cutoff time right for stories. If it's after this, it's
1:04
Speaker 2: not We can't consider it history right.
1:07
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
1:08
Speaker 1: That is a decision I made arbitrarily, and we've just
1:12
Speaker 1: sort of gone with that for quite some time. It
1:16
Speaker 1: goes back to the philosophical question of what counts as history.
1:22
Speaker 1: History is a living thing. It's an ongoing conversation. If
1:26
Speaker 1: you are a fan of history, then you probably have
1:30
Speaker 1: dealt with the same dilemma you have wrestled with this
1:33
Speaker 1: idea what counts as history, what counts as the present?
1:38
Speaker 1: Why is why is postmodern literature such a magabadger, such
1:45
Speaker 1: a pickle when it comes to the idea of experience.
1:50
Speaker 1: We're talking today about a primate named Max, not to
1:55
Speaker 1: be confused with our super producer, mister Max Williams. We're
1:59
Speaker 1: talking about a guy who was once upon a time
2:03
Speaker 1: the most famous crime fighting gorilla in all of South Africa. Now,
2:10
Speaker 1: our buddy Max here is a Western Lowland gorilla. He
2:15
Speaker 1: was at the Johannesburg Zoo and in nineteen ninety seven
2:19
Speaker 1: he was shot and he was wounded, and he became
2:23
Speaker 1: a symbol for larger tensions and social issues within the
2:30
Speaker 1: nation of South Africa. And to your point, Max, in
2:33
Speaker 1: this episode you will hear a pivotal moment for us
2:39
Speaker 1: on ridiculous history. This is the episode wherein we determined
2:45
Speaker 1: our cutoff for the past versus the present. Anything that
2:51
Speaker 1: happened before nineteen ninety seven counts as ridiculous history for us.
2:57
Speaker 1: Anything after that, well, negotiable.
3:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know.
3:01
Speaker 2: I'm excited for this. Let's get into it.
3:07
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the show,
3:35
Speaker 1: fellow Ridiculous Historians, friends and neighbors, US residents and citizens
3:41
Speaker 1: of the world alike. We are going on a journey
3:45
Speaker 1: today to a different part of the world, and what
3:50
Speaker 1: better way to get into it than to open with
3:53
Speaker 1: a question, Noel, have you ever seen a gorilla in
3:56
Speaker 1: real life?
3:57
Speaker 3: Yes? At the Columbia Zoo in Colombia, South Carolina, they
4:01
Speaker 3: have a gorilla situation. There, a gorilla situation. Have a
4:04
Speaker 3: gorilla sitch? Yeah, now silverbacks, I believe. Oh and I'm ben. Oh,
4:10
Speaker 3: of course you are.
4:10
Speaker 1: And we have to, of course give a shout out
4:12
Speaker 1: to our long suffering super producer, Casey Pegram.
4:18
Speaker 3: He's still in the wind, but he's here in spirit.
4:21
Speaker 3: In fact, today we are kind of producerless and peek
4:24
Speaker 3: behind the curtain. It is Memorial Day and we are
4:27
Speaker 3: here in the office making this episode just for you,
4:31
Speaker 3: just for you, specifically you.
4:33
Speaker 1: Yes, if you're listening, you're thinking we're talking about a
4:36
Speaker 1: general to you.
4:37
Speaker 3: No, we don't do that.
4:38
Speaker 1: No, it's specifically you. And what better way to start,
4:42
Speaker 1: we thought today than to talk a little bit about gorillas.
4:47
Speaker 1: These are amazing.
4:48
Speaker 3: Creatures they are, and they are majestic and also quite powerful.
4:55
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, a lot of upper body strength. They got
4:57
Speaker 3: those big old forearms and those tiny little legs. But man,
5:01
Speaker 3: I would not want to run into one in a
5:04
Speaker 3: dark alley or you know, accidentally end up flung into
5:06
Speaker 3: its pen.
5:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're the largest living primate. Males are about twice
5:12
Speaker 1: the size of females, so a male gorilla can weigh
5:15
Speaker 1: up the four hundred pounds.
5:17
Speaker 3: And they.
5:20
Speaker 1: Have opposable thumbs just like us, right, so they can manipulate,
5:24
Speaker 1: hold and carry things. They're also really really smart and
5:28
Speaker 1: they are fun. Fact, although they look like they might
5:32
Speaker 1: be ferocious carnivores, they're not.
5:34
Speaker 3: You remember Coco Cocoa, the sign language gorilla, right, heartwarming story.
5:39
Speaker 1: There still still a little controversial in the science. But
5:43
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, that that stuff can break your
5:45
Speaker 1: heart because it feels like it's having very human, self aware,
5:49
Speaker 1: sapient interactions.
5:50
Speaker 3: Well, if you want going to double down on the heartbreak, Ben,
5:52
Speaker 3: there's actually a picture of Robin Williams kicking it with
5:56
Speaker 3: Coco and it will jerk some tears right out of
5:59
Speaker 3: your ey eye holes if you look at that.
6:01
Speaker 1: One eye holes. Oh, the Rick and Morty reference that
6:05
Speaker 1: we're just gonna leave there, what is it?
6:07
Speaker 3: Terry flaps? Yeah, texted me. But on the way up
6:10
Speaker 3: and you were downstairs and you you asked me if
6:12
Speaker 3: I wanted to touch your terry flaps.
6:14
Speaker 1: Yes, that is a that is a reference. Don't go
6:17
Speaker 1: calling hr on us, folks. That is a reference to
6:20
Speaker 1: Rick and Morty. But but the the statement of eye holes, yeah,
6:25
Speaker 1: it's it's true. It will hurt your eye holes and
6:27
Speaker 1: your heartholes to see Robin Williams with that, that lovely gorilla. Now,
6:32
Speaker 1: Coco has something in common with our with our protagonists,
6:38
Speaker 1: or a tragic hero of today's story, because Coco is
6:43
Speaker 1: a type of gorilla called a Western Lowland gorilla. Western
6:48
Speaker 1: Lowland gorillas are the primary type of gorilla that you
6:52
Speaker 1: will see in a zoo across the world. There are
6:55
Speaker 1: some exceptions. There's an Eastern Lowland gorilla that lives at
6:58
Speaker 1: the Antwerp Zoo, and there are some mountain gorillas that
7:01
Speaker 1: live in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And I
7:05
Speaker 1: mean zoo gorillas, not gorillas in the wild. So typically,
7:08
Speaker 1: if you are imagining a gorilla exhibit you have seen
7:14
Speaker 1: or a preservation you've seen here in the States, then
7:17
Speaker 1: it is going to be it's going to be a
7:20
Speaker 1: home to western lowland gorillas. They're generally lighter colored than
7:25
Speaker 1: Eastern gorillas, but in terms of behavior, they're still the same.
7:31
Speaker 1: They're very intelligent, they're tremendously strong, They're calm until they're
7:38
Speaker 1: not well.
7:38
Speaker 3: They're highly territorial. They will protect their turf and their
7:42
Speaker 3: own if you come up upon them and oppose a threat,
7:45
Speaker 3: they will go to great length to defend themselves and
7:49
Speaker 3: their loved ones.
7:50
Speaker 1: And occasionally these stories pop up in the news like Harambei,
7:54
Speaker 1: the gorilla who was tragically put to death.
7:59
Speaker 3: A little kid fell in the pen.
8:00
Speaker 1: When a kid a human child something sounds so creepy
8:04
Speaker 1: and David Bowie esque and Labyrinth saying human child.
8:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well a.
8:09
Speaker 1: Kid fell in and as a result, Rombey was put
8:13
Speaker 1: to sleep.
8:14
Speaker 3: Yeah.
8:15
Speaker 1: And today's story centers on a human man, a human man, yes,
8:22
Speaker 1: who was once a human child, and a gorilla named
8:26
Speaker 1: Max who lived at the Johannesburg Zoo.
8:28
Speaker 3: So, as the story goes, a guy was fleeing the police.
8:33
Speaker 3: He had robbed some houses. He was on the lamb,
8:37
Speaker 3: he was on the run, and he vaulted a fence.
8:41
Speaker 3: I'm trying to picture how this happened, Like, did he
8:44
Speaker 3: know what he was getting into? Was He's like, that's cool,
8:46
Speaker 3: I'll figure this out. Anyway, vaulted defence, running from the cops,
8:49
Speaker 3: ended up inside Max's gorilla pit. Yeah, that he shared
8:55
Speaker 3: with his life partner, Lisa.
8:58
Speaker 1: His mate, his better half. So this guy, this criminal,
9:02
Speaker 1: Isaac Mofokang, jumps into the zoo as he said, Noel,
9:08
Speaker 1: and Max, as we had established earlier, being a gorilla,
9:12
Speaker 1: is thinking, who the heck is this? This is not
9:15
Speaker 1: a zookeeper. This is not one of the people that
9:18
Speaker 1: I know. And so he defends his territory. What we
9:22
Speaker 1: mean by that is he displays signs of intimidation and
9:26
Speaker 1: he moves toward Isaac Mofo Kang and Mofo Kang. Unfortunately
9:34
Speaker 1: for Max was.
9:36
Speaker 3: Armed, Yeah, and he put a few slugs and old
9:40
Speaker 3: Max didn't he He.
9:43
Speaker 1: Shot him in the chest, but that was not enough
9:47
Speaker 1: to stop a four hundred pounds angry gorilla. So Max
9:54
Speaker 1: bites Isaac, and you know, we try to be a
9:57
Speaker 1: family show. But bites him in the butt essentially, and
10:00
Speaker 1: it sounds hilarious now, but that is a grievous wound.
10:04
Speaker 1: So he has Isaac Muffulken bitten in the buttocks. He's
10:09
Speaker 1: pinned him against the wall. This man is about to die.
10:13
Speaker 1: Police intervene and in the process of rescuing Isaac, the
10:18
Speaker 1: police officers, at least two of them, are also injured.
10:21
Speaker 3: By Max, He's not having it well. I mean, you know,
10:23
Speaker 3: he can't differentiate at this point between friend or foe.
10:27
Speaker 3: He's already been threatened. And then these other schmo's show
10:31
Speaker 3: up trying to apprehend the suspects, and to Max, they're
10:35
Speaker 3: just another part of the problem. They are trespassing on
10:39
Speaker 3: his land and he's been shot. Well, got shot in
10:41
Speaker 3: the chest and then in the neck, right right, yeah,
10:43
Speaker 3: through the neck. But I think the one in the
10:46
Speaker 3: neck passed right through, I want to say, luckily. And
10:49
Speaker 3: then the one in the chest was not a mortal wound, thankfully,
10:52
Speaker 3: And in fact, I think they actually left it in.
10:55
Speaker 3: They left the bullet in because it would have been
10:57
Speaker 3: more traumatic for Max if they had had to digger
11:00
Speaker 3: and do surgery to get it out and they put
11:01
Speaker 3: them down. Yeah, under anesthetic rather, but we are getting
11:06
Speaker 3: ahead of ourselves.
11:07
Speaker 1: We are getting a little bit ahead of ourselves. There's
11:10
Speaker 1: just a bit more color we should add to the
11:13
Speaker 1: story here, because in many other countries and many other
11:18
Speaker 1: points in time, this may have been a story that
11:23
Speaker 1: you hear as a three to four minute piece on
11:26
Speaker 1: your evening news right you turn it, you tune into
11:29
Speaker 1: channel eleven whatever, and people are saying, strange story from
11:33
Speaker 1: a local Columbia zoo or something. However, this was Johannesburg,
11:39
Speaker 1: South Africa in the late nineties. People were tremendously concerned
11:44
Speaker 1: about crime in the city and so Max became famous
11:50
Speaker 1: for this.
11:51
Speaker 3: Yeah, something of a symbol you know, of I don't know,
11:54
Speaker 3: maybe rule of laws not the right term, but just
11:56
Speaker 3: the idea of pushing back against criminals that were just
12:00
Speaker 3: everywhere the wave of crime. This is awful, and you know,
12:03
Speaker 3: we're gonna get a little more into this, but we
12:06
Speaker 3: also haven't really talked about the fact that this is
12:07
Speaker 3: the nineties and our show's called ridiculous history and the
12:11
Speaker 3: notion of the nineties. It seems a little off even
12:15
Speaker 3: for us. We were like, is this really historical, but
12:18
Speaker 3: man was at a different time. It was a very
12:20
Speaker 3: different time.
12:21
Speaker 1: And the way that we decided to approach this was
12:26
Speaker 1: to look at what we would call a cutoff date, right, like,
12:30
Speaker 1: at what point does something become history even though we're
12:33
Speaker 1: creating it every single second of our lives. I think
12:37
Speaker 1: we can all agree that right now two thousand and eight.
12:41
Speaker 3: Would still be a little too recent. I think so.
12:43
Speaker 3: But nineteen ninety and not to mention the history surrounding
12:47
Speaker 3: this time in Johannesburg and South African general, we forget
12:52
Speaker 3: I certainly forgot that apartheid, this this institutionalized racist government
12:59
Speaker 3: that own owned South Africa for decades, had only just
13:05
Speaker 3: ended and there was severe fallout. You know, they had
13:09
Speaker 3: democracy for the first time after the end of apartheid.
13:12
Speaker 3: This again institutionalized segregation of the majority black population of
13:19
Speaker 3: the country and by the minority white government of the country.
13:25
Speaker 3: We can get in a little bit more specifics about
13:26
Speaker 3: that in a minute, but that's the that's the atmosphere here. Yeah,
13:31
Speaker 3: and the crime, you know, the non political violence is
13:36
Speaker 3: there's no rule of law. It's like a free for
13:38
Speaker 3: all in the street. It absolutely as a total powder
13:40
Speaker 3: k and this idea of Max, I think it could
13:44
Speaker 3: be argued was sort of a beacon of hope that
13:47
Speaker 3: was very quickly latched onto by the community. Yeah. Yeah.
13:52
Speaker 1: One thing that may be useful by way of comparison
13:55
Speaker 1: for American listeners is to think of McGruff the crime dog.
14:00
Speaker 3: Do you remember McGruff? Noll I do, But he was
14:02
Speaker 3: a cartoon and he was pretty inspiring. Just as a cartoon,
14:05
Speaker 3: This was a real life gorilla that had weathered this
14:09
Speaker 3: chaotic environment.
14:10
Speaker 1: And the reason the reason I bring up the McGruff
14:13
Speaker 1: comparison is because Max becomes this very useful symbol for
14:19
Speaker 1: the police, as we said, and he has merchandise that
14:23
Speaker 1: comes out. We've got stuffed Max dolls.
14:25
Speaker 3: Well, and McGruff would take a bite out of crime.
14:28
Speaker 3: Max took a bite out of the butt of crime.
14:32
Speaker 1: Yes, and Max was also as you had said, Max
14:36
Speaker 1: was real. This was a real incident. But he didn't
14:40
Speaker 1: just get stuffed animals made in his likeness. He became
14:45
Speaker 1: a celebrity. And I don't know if you had ever
14:48
Speaker 1: heard this word, but this was my first time reading
14:50
Speaker 1: the word spokes beast.
14:52
Speaker 3: Was he a pan sexual, non threatening spokes thing? Remember
14:56
Speaker 3: that from mister show pit pat. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
14:59
Speaker 3: spokes beast. He was the spokes beast for Labombo Bananas
15:04
Speaker 3: and he actually got paid with a year's supply of
15:08
Speaker 3: free bananas. They literally made it rain bananas on Max Catching.
15:14
Speaker 1: A computer company hired him to pose in ads for
15:17
Speaker 1: its new software.
15:18
Speaker 3: Yeah. I wonder what the software was called. I couldn't.
15:20
Speaker 3: I couldn't find any specifics about that, but it was, Yeah,
15:24
Speaker 3: you have a gorilla kind of chilling your software for you.
15:27
Speaker 3: That's that's interesting. He must have really been beloved. There
15:31
Speaker 3: was There was a drink, an energy drink, which I
15:33
Speaker 3: love the name of. It's just called Energade or Innergade.
15:36
Speaker 3: I was wondering, is it interrogate or energy as well.
15:39
Speaker 3: It's sort of like a Gatorade equivalent. I guess they
15:43
Speaker 3: they signed up Max after they learned that that was
15:47
Speaker 3: Max's favorite drink for taking antibiotics at the zoo. The
15:52
Speaker 3: zoo keepers would slip his meds into a nice refreshing
15:55
Speaker 3: bottle of energade.
15:56
Speaker 1: And so he thought he was having a juice party,
15:59
Speaker 1: which you know that I can easily see that happen
16:02
Speaker 1: because if Innergate or Energade is anything like Gatorade or
16:07
Speaker 1: power Aid. Then it's probably very sugary.
16:10
Speaker 3: Right.
16:11
Speaker 1: So a bank and a construction company also sponsored Max,
16:16
Speaker 1: meaning that they contributed money to the zoo for his upkeep,
16:20
Speaker 1: medical bills, feeding.
16:22
Speaker 3: Et cetera. Yeah, like upgrading his pen, things like that,
16:25
Speaker 3: the infrastructure. Because again, he was like a local He
16:29
Speaker 3: wasn't a national treasure, you know, a local hero. We
16:31
Speaker 3: got to tell the newspaper story. This is great. Yeah,
16:33
Speaker 3: the Saturday Star paid twenty two hundred bucks for a
16:38
Speaker 3: photo or I guess for a photo shoot where Max
16:41
Speaker 3: was browsing the paper and they got the photos.
16:45
Speaker 1: After they got the photos, because Max clearly is a
16:47
Speaker 1: professional at this point, after they got the photos, he
16:50
Speaker 1: went ahead and ate every.
16:52
Speaker 3: Page of the paper. He was a fan. He was
16:54
Speaker 3: a fan. He was trying to take it all in
16:56
Speaker 3: through osmosis.
16:57
Speaker 1: It's similar to what more Sendak called the highest praise
17:02
Speaker 1: he had ever received, the children's.
17:03
Speaker 3: Author of Where the Wild Things Are. Uh.
17:06
Speaker 1: He said he received a note from a fan who
17:10
Speaker 1: did they enjoyed his book, reading it, and they also
17:14
Speaker 1: wanted to eat it.
17:15
Speaker 3: My girlfriend asked me the strangest question the other day.
17:17
Speaker 3: She said, have you ever eaten paper to keep someone
17:20
Speaker 3: from getting it, like like a note. And at first
17:24
Speaker 3: I was like, what do you talk? What do you mean?
17:25
Speaker 3: And she you know, I mean like, if you have
17:28
Speaker 3: a teacher caught you passing a note in class, rather
17:30
Speaker 3: than having her confiscate it and see what horrid things
17:34
Speaker 3: you were writing, I'll just eat it. Yeah, I'm like,
17:37
Speaker 3: it's that as.
17:37
Speaker 1: Baller, that sounds like something people should not admit to doing.
17:42
Speaker 3: Well, I'm sorry for throwing her under the bus, but
17:44
Speaker 3: you guys don't know. Oh did she did she admit it?
17:46
Speaker 3: She admitted it. Yeah. I mean it's resourceful. I think
17:49
Speaker 3: so too. But what was she possibly writing that would
17:52
Speaker 3: have been like worth consuming right there in front of
17:55
Speaker 3: the teacher?
17:56
Speaker 1: Overthrow the teacher. The revolution is now.
17:58
Speaker 3: I think so.
17:58
Speaker 1: Speaking of which, Yes, speaking of which, we could go
18:02
Speaker 1: on a list some of Max's sponsorships, but it's more important,
18:08
Speaker 1: we feel, to explore why this occurred. Once this came so,
18:14
Speaker 1: we mentioned, we mentioned apartheid, we mentioned the distinction between
18:21
Speaker 1: political and non political crime, and unfortunately we could do
18:25
Speaker 1: an entirely different show on the systemic causes of apartheid,
18:32
Speaker 1: the process of combating it, and the ramifications of apartheid
18:38
Speaker 1: that remain in Johannesburg in the modern day. But we
18:43
Speaker 1: feel the cultural ecology from which Max's celebrity arises is
18:51
Speaker 1: as important as the details of that moment in the zoo.
18:55
Speaker 3: Oh for sure, dare we say much more important. But
18:58
Speaker 3: Max being like like a batman esque figure like and
19:02
Speaker 3: Johannesburg and South Africa being the Gotham city, everyone needs
19:05
Speaker 3: a hero they can look to, they can believe it,
19:08
Speaker 3: they can believe in And as silly as that sounds,
19:11
Speaker 3: and you know, we're editorializing a little bit here, but
19:13
Speaker 3: I can't help but think that's what caused this gorilla
19:17
Speaker 3: to reach such heights of celebrity. You know, just a
19:21
Speaker 3: bit of background, because I did not know quite how
19:25
Speaker 3: far back this stretched. Apartheid became law in South Africa
19:30
Speaker 3: in nineteen fifty. Things like marriages between white people and
19:36
Speaker 3: black people were forbidden, any kind of sexual relations. The
19:41
Speaker 3: idea was to separate not only black people from white people,
19:46
Speaker 3: but black people from each other and like sectionalize them
19:49
Speaker 3: into different They called them, you know, tribal factions or whatever,
19:54
Speaker 3: and it kept them from organizing and kept them from
19:56
Speaker 3: fighting back and having political power. Right, they had to
20:01
Speaker 3: carry papers. It was like Nazi Germany. And this again,
20:05
Speaker 3: this did not really fully come to an end, at
20:08
Speaker 3: least on the books until nineteen ninety three. Right.
20:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, this process of setting aside territory and for black
20:18
Speaker 1: inhabitants of South Africa at the time was the things
20:23
Speaker 1: they were making were known as Bantustans and ten of
20:27
Speaker 1: them were established in South Africa to concentrate members of
20:31
Speaker 1: certain ethnic groups, making those groups, in the opinion of
20:35
Speaker 1: the ruling party, ethically homogeneous and making them nation states.
20:41
Speaker 1: But it also it also, as you said, had the
20:45
Speaker 1: clear effect of removing or stymying the ability of people
20:51
Speaker 1: to band together in a larger force to combat apartheid.
20:55
Speaker 1: Apartheid was based on the principle known as boss cop.
21:00
Speaker 1: Now neither Noel nor I speak this language, but boss
21:05
Speaker 1: cop with two a's two s is was this. It's
21:09
Speaker 1: this concept that translates from Afrikaans to something like boss ship,
21:15
Speaker 1: like being the boss or domination. It's it's essentially it's
21:18
Speaker 1: white supremacy. And the idea of the National Party at
21:25
Speaker 1: this time was very much solidly based in the old
21:32
Speaker 1: concepts of colonialism. The idea that there is some sort
21:37
Speaker 1: of a stab, there's some sort of inborn superiority, depending
21:44
Speaker 1: on how one defines a race or whatever. And we
21:47
Speaker 1: must also point out that these kinds of concepts, this
21:52
Speaker 1: white supremacy stuff is not is not a just a
21:57
Speaker 1: general all white people are better, because there are also
22:00
Speaker 1: levels in their white supremacist ideas that certain white people are,
22:04
Speaker 1: you know, somehow better than other.
22:06
Speaker 3: White people, et cetera. And these concepts go back to
22:10
Speaker 3: the very founding of South Africa as an independent nation.
22:13
Speaker 3: In nineteen thirteen, this thing called the Land Act was
22:17
Speaker 3: passed that began this segregation of Black Africans and the
22:24
Speaker 3: minority whites and also deprived Black Africans of the ability
22:29
Speaker 3: to work as sharecroppers and they were you know, denied
22:35
Speaker 3: a means of an income essentially.
22:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, And this again, this applied not just to
22:42
Speaker 1: people that the governing forces characterized as black. It applied
22:48
Speaker 1: to people that they characterized as non white in any ways.
22:50
Speaker 1: So this also included what would be described as South
22:54
Speaker 1: Asians or people they would have called Indians at the time.
22:56
Speaker 3: And it would split up families because a mother, for example,
23:00
Speaker 3: could be considered black or Bantu. And then a child
23:06
Speaker 3: or a spouse could be classified differently, and it would
23:11
Speaker 3: literally break up these families.
23:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's spot on. Through the dual use of
23:17
Speaker 1: bureaucracy and brutality, they attempted to and in some spheres,
23:22
Speaker 1: succeeded in taking this insane notion and enforcing it or
23:31
Speaker 1: bringing it to a horrific reality on innocent people. These
23:36
Speaker 1: are not you know, it's not like a weird punishment
23:39
Speaker 1: they made up for soldiers. These are civilians, these are children. Yeah,
23:44
Speaker 1: and we see already an unsustainable situation. Things like what
23:50
Speaker 1: we see historically. What we find is that in cases
23:55
Speaker 1: of discrimination, which always always exists, cases where this sort
24:01
Speaker 1: of execrable suppression and oppression of people occurs, there is
24:08
Speaker 1: almost always going to be a backlash.
24:11
Speaker 3: Yeah, instant opposition in the form of the African National
24:16
Speaker 3: Congress as early as the nineteen thirteen Land Act, that
24:20
Speaker 3: controversial law that was passed. And this is the party
24:25
Speaker 3: that would be like if we're talking rebels versus you know,
24:31
Speaker 3: the Empire, these are the rebels right in star Wars
24:34
Speaker 3: parlace here. And it wasn't until the late forties that
24:37
Speaker 3: the idea of apartheid actually began. The African or National
24:43
Speaker 3: Party actually won an election using this. This the first
24:47
Speaker 3: time you started seeing this word apartheid, which means separateness.
24:51
Speaker 3: There's a fantastic rundown of all of this in the
24:54
Speaker 3: timeline of Apartheid on history dot Com that I recommend
24:58
Speaker 3: checking out. For sure. It gives you a pretty deep
25:00
Speaker 3: dive into some of this. And we're not going to
25:02
Speaker 3: go into the minutia of all of it, because it's
25:04
Speaker 3: a whole, like you said, been a whole story unto itself.
25:07
Speaker 3: But from the very start you have this opposition and
25:10
Speaker 3: a culture of violence, a culture of war essentially.
25:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the precedents for these racist beliefs existed for
25:21
Speaker 1: a long long time. They were codified in the late forties.
25:26
Speaker 1: But the history of the African National Congress, as you said,
25:31
Speaker 1: doesn't start just there in the forties.
25:34
Speaker 3: The origins go back.
25:37
Speaker 1: You'll hear people report that the African National Congress really
25:42
Speaker 1: starts or it's the first inklings of this begin when
25:46
Speaker 1: a fellow named Pixley Saka Seme says in nineteen eleven,
25:51
Speaker 1: forget all the past differences among Africans and unite in
25:55
Speaker 1: one national organization. It's also really important to say this
25:58
Speaker 1: that during the time of colonialism, many of the borders
26:03
Speaker 1: that were established in the modern states now were created
26:08
Speaker 1: to purposefully divide existing communities. So now it doesn't matter
26:14
Speaker 1: if for time immemorial you and you and the rest
26:18
Speaker 1: of your community have lived in this one area. Right
26:23
Speaker 1: once the national lines are drawn by these European powers,
26:27
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you are different states.
26:29
Speaker 3: Almost like a more extreme version of something like gerrymandering,
26:33
Speaker 3: where you're sort of rigging the game against people to
26:38
Speaker 3: ensure that they have no voice politically.
26:40
Speaker 1: Right from the perspective of the pro apartheid National Party,
26:52
Speaker 1: the activities of the National Congress are terrorism essentially, that's
26:58
Speaker 1: what they're That's what they are are perceiving it as.
27:01
Speaker 1: That's what they're portraying it as in the international media.
27:04
Speaker 3: But you gotta fight fire with fire, Ben, I mean,
27:07
Speaker 3: these is essentially a fascist regime, you know, that is
27:12
Speaker 3: trying to utterly crush any kind of resistance with violence,
27:17
Speaker 3: and the only way to fight back against that is
27:19
Speaker 3: with more violence, And unfortunately a lot of the time,
27:22
Speaker 3: I mean, that's the thing. The history of this country
27:25
Speaker 3: is so rooted in conflict, just constant conflict from the
27:30
Speaker 3: beginning until apartheid came to an end in the early nineties. Well,
27:36
Speaker 3: the conflict's change, perhaps, that's what I'm saying, Even the
27:39
Speaker 3: notion of it coming to an end in them establishing
27:42
Speaker 3: real democracy. That does not happen overnight, especially when you've
27:46
Speaker 3: just had constant struggle for decades and decades, it becomes ingrained.
27:50
Speaker 1: You know, in nineteen sixty seventy black demonstrators are killed
27:55
Speaker 1: in Sharpville and the African National Congress is officially banned,
28:00
Speaker 1: just just like ten years after the government comes to power,
28:05
Speaker 1: they classify everybody by race. Oh, they also banned the
28:09
Speaker 1: Communist Party as well in nineteen fifty. Let me go
28:13
Speaker 1: back for a second. In nineteen fifty, Nelson Mandela is
28:17
Speaker 1: responding to the banning of the Communist Party, these racial
28:21
Speaker 1: classifications and such by launching a campaign of civil disobedience.
28:28
Speaker 1: But when the ANC is officially banned in nineteen sixty
28:31
Speaker 1: one year later, Nelson Mandela in nineteen sixty one heads
28:36
Speaker 1: the African National Congress's new military wing, which launches sabotage campaigns,
28:43
Speaker 1: and these become you know, these become on the ground operations,
28:47
Speaker 1: so no more civil disobedience. These are acts to meant
28:51
Speaker 1: to purposely in some way cripple the function of the government.
28:56
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I mean they are in open rebellion. And Nelson Mandela.
29:01
Speaker 3: After many of the leaders of the movement were jailed
29:04
Speaker 3: or executed, Mandela was in prison, as you know, for
29:10
Speaker 3: quite a long time, from nineteen sixty three until believe
29:14
Speaker 3: just nineteen ninety and they kind of bounced him all
29:18
Speaker 3: over town, didn't they been. Yeah. Yeah.
29:19
Speaker 1: He was originally jailed in Marshall Square Prison in Johannesburg.
29:25
Speaker 1: He along with his co defendants, admitted that they had
29:31
Speaker 1: committed acts of sabotage, but denied that they were waging
29:36
Speaker 1: guerrilla war against the governments. Of course, there's sentence to
29:40
Speaker 1: life in prison, although the prosecutor demanded the death sentence.
29:44
Speaker 1: Mandela is eventually transferred to Robin Island.
29:47
Speaker 3: Where he is.
29:50
Speaker 1: Forced to live for the next eighteen years. And at
29:52
Speaker 1: this point he's thinking, you know, I may be in
29:55
Speaker 1: jail for the rest of my natural life. He gets
30:00
Speaker 1: transferred to a couple of different prisons. There is also
30:05
Speaker 1: a free Mandela protest taking place at that time. The
30:09
Speaker 1: politics don't stop because he is imprisoned, and he in
30:13
Speaker 1: many ways becomes a symbol for the fight against apartheid.
30:17
Speaker 1: He gets transferred to a prison in Cape Town called
30:20
Speaker 1: Pollsmoor Prison and the conditions they are a little better
30:25
Speaker 1: than they are at Robin Island. But then he gets
30:27
Speaker 1: transferred to Victor Verster Prison near a place called part
30:33
Speaker 1: and he eventually, going back to what you said, he
30:37
Speaker 1: eventually in nineteen ninety is freed.
30:40
Speaker 3: He is freed and hem in league with the current
30:45
Speaker 3: President FW de Clerk, who was the head of the
30:48
Speaker 3: government at the time. They work together to repeal many
30:54
Speaker 3: of these apartheid laws that have been on the books
30:57
Speaker 3: for so long and establish a new constitution which gave
31:02
Speaker 3: African black citizens the right to vote democratically and other
31:09
Speaker 3: racial groups that were also discriminated against as you mentioned
31:12
Speaker 3: non whites, and all of this went into play in
31:16
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety four, they started free elections and essentially laid
31:23
Speaker 3: the groundwork for having a free and democratic society.
31:26
Speaker 1: Right the ANC campaign to ninety four, their slogan is
31:30
Speaker 1: a better life for all and there's a focus on development.
31:36
Speaker 1: This is around the time that the world, much of
31:40
Speaker 1: which was already against the pre existing system of apartheid.
31:46
Speaker 1: This is when the world also starts to actively support
31:50
Speaker 1: Nelson Mandela and the A and C through the soft
31:53
Speaker 1: diplomacy of international accolades and awards, most particularly the Nobel Prize.
31:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, he shared that with the clerk.
32:01
Speaker 1: And the campaign was meant to not just break the system,
32:10
Speaker 1: but to build a better one. They had and continue
32:13
Speaker 1: to pursue as we're going to find noble goals. One
32:17
Speaker 1: such would be the idea of building a million houses
32:20
Speaker 1: in five years, free education, access to water and electricity
32:25
Speaker 1: because many people went without it.
32:28
Speaker 3: And this constitution was insanely forward thinking, had so many
32:33
Speaker 3: protections built into the language, protections that we don't have
32:39
Speaker 3: on the books that we fight for daily in this country.
32:43
Speaker 3: Protection for gays and lesbians, leading to the being called
32:47
Speaker 3: the Rainbow Nation. Rainbow Nation exactly. Not only that, some
32:50
Speaker 3: of those very progressive ideas of how to establish good
32:54
Speaker 3: housing for the poor, the idea of basic human rights,
32:59
Speaker 3: to education, to healthcare, workers' rights, access to information again, women,
33:09
Speaker 3: gays and lesbians, children, environmental protections. And then there's this
33:14
Speaker 3: thing that I thought was so cool. It's called the
33:16
Speaker 3: principle of the ratchet. And this was language built into
33:20
Speaker 3: this constitution that said, essentially even if the government can't,
33:24
Speaker 3: with the resources currently available, give all of these things
33:28
Speaker 3: like schools, housing, clean water to every community all at once,
33:33
Speaker 3: it has to convince the courts that they are working
33:36
Speaker 3: towards it in a fundamentally real way.
33:40
Speaker 1: Which is fantastic because it's a baked in accountability right.
33:45
Speaker 1: And while we are rightly praising the anc for doing
33:50
Speaker 1: a thing that many people around the world once thought
33:53
Speaker 1: was impossible, we do also have to acknowledge that the
33:58
Speaker 1: way they got there did involve what you know, did
34:03
Speaker 1: involve more than non violence and more than sabotage of
34:09
Speaker 1: industrial stuff like in There's an article in The New
34:12
Speaker 1: York Times from nineteen ninety seven that examines how senior
34:17
Speaker 1: officials of the African National Congress later after taking powers,
34:22
Speaker 1: said that they had, if not actively participating in some
34:31
Speaker 1: of the guerrilla violence that Mandela had been accused of
34:35
Speaker 1: and his co defendants, they could have at the very
34:38
Speaker 1: least done something to stop it. They were tacitly aiding
34:42
Speaker 1: people who were perpetrating these events. Again not all on
34:47
Speaker 1: not all on just you know, soldiers of the pro
34:49
Speaker 1: apartheid side, but again men, women and children.
34:53
Speaker 3: The line becomes so blurred because so many of these
34:55
Speaker 3: groups are little independent offshoots, independent rebel grips, militias that
35:01
Speaker 3: are armed, because apparently in nineteen ninety four you could
35:04
Speaker 3: buy an AK forty seven on the black market for
35:07
Speaker 3: what would equate to about fifteen dollars American. There's this
35:11
Speaker 3: incredibly moving and disturbing article in The New Republic from
35:16
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety four called South Africa's Violent Road to Real
35:19
Speaker 3: Democracy and it mentions some of these statistics about the
35:23
Speaker 3: AK forty seven and how supposedly at the time you
35:26
Speaker 3: could order a hit for that same amount fifty rand.
35:30
Speaker 3: And this article centers, at least in the early part
35:33
Speaker 3: of it, around this hospital called Bara gowan Off Hospital
35:37
Speaker 3: shortened to the Barra, which is in the Soweto township
35:41
Speaker 3: of Johannesburg, and it just shows a lot of the
35:45
Speaker 3: comings and goings and interviews a lot of the doctors,
35:47
Speaker 3: and it just you know, you're seeing stabbing victims coming through,
35:51
Speaker 3: people with these very telltale wounds from a particular weapon
35:57
Speaker 3: called a panga, which is like a machete that the
36:01
Speaker 3: members of the Zulu faction would carry, and it just
36:07
Speaker 3: the sense of desperation that comes across in this article,
36:10
Speaker 3: like they refer to the Doctor's Trauma ward as the
36:13
Speaker 3: pit and it just I can't imagine the chaos. And
36:18
Speaker 3: it does a really good job of kind of differentiating
36:21
Speaker 3: between the political violence that had a death toll of
36:24
Speaker 3: more than fifteen thousand over a span of four years,
36:29
Speaker 3: but the majority of the violence that outshine even that
36:33
Speaker 3: insane number was just criminal violence.
36:36
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, And I'm glad you're bringing this up, although
36:40
Speaker 1: it is a disturbing thing. In two thousand and seven,
36:44
Speaker 1: the South African government contacted the Center for the Study
36:47
Speaker 1: of Violence and Reconciliation to figure out why this crime
36:52
Speaker 1: occurs or what the tone of it is, the systemic causes,
36:56
Speaker 1: and one of the things they found was that the
36:59
Speaker 1: courts were inefficient and that violence had become normalized.
37:06
Speaker 3: So this was expected.
37:08
Speaker 1: And this is also tying in, of course, the vulnerability
37:12
Speaker 1: of young people, high levels of inequality. From these various factors,
37:17
Speaker 1: we see hard numbers arise. I think in the same
37:22
Speaker 1: article you mentioned sites, at least in that time, South
37:27
Speaker 1: Africa's murder rate was ten times that of the United States,
37:30
Speaker 1: which you know has a national image of a country
37:35
Speaker 1: with a cartoonish murder rate.
37:36
Speaker 3: Here at the US. Yeah, and of course you know
37:38
Speaker 3: with this chaos, the African National Congress was constantly at
37:43
Speaker 3: war with the police and their goal, according to this
37:47
Speaker 3: article and everything else we've seen, was to make these
37:50
Speaker 3: various areas, these townships ungovernable is the word they use here.
37:55
Speaker 3: And so you're dealing with this just decades long struggle
37:59
Speaker 3: that never quite comes to an end even after apartheid ends.
38:04
Speaker 3: You can't just turn that off with the passage of
38:07
Speaker 3: the law.
38:09
Speaker 1: Right, it's very difficult to address all of the contributing factors,
38:15
Speaker 1: the old enmities, because we can't forget that many of
38:19
Speaker 1: the pro apartheid individuals that were active in the government
38:24
Speaker 1: were also tremendously financially influential, right or socially influential.
38:30
Speaker 3: So some of those means.
38:32
Speaker 1: Of not to sound like a banned Communist Party member,
38:36
Speaker 1: but many of those means of production were still owned
38:39
Speaker 1: by the forces of apartheid or portype.
38:44
Speaker 3: People allow money to be made with constant conflicts, right,
38:47
Speaker 3: and this.
38:50
Speaker 1: We know that this sounds like disturbing stuff. But while
38:54
Speaker 1: we're painting this picture, we don't want to gloss over
38:57
Speaker 1: the fact that South Africa as a nation has made
39:02
Speaker 1: tremendous progress, but that progress still continues today. South Africa
39:10
Speaker 1: as recently as twenty fifteen have been characterized by British
39:15
Speaker 1: papers like The Guardian as a country at war. There
39:19
Speaker 1: were the murder rates sword to nearly forty nine people
39:24
Speaker 1: a day in South Africa overall, and of course that's
39:28
Speaker 1: not going to be evenly distributed. A lot of that
39:30
Speaker 1: happens in the urban centers. But despite all of that,
39:38
Speaker 1: this progress continues the legacy of the African National Congress continues.
39:45
Speaker 3: It's interesting, though, because Johannesburg is subject to something that
39:49
Speaker 3: we are seeing quite a lot of here in Atlanta,
39:51
Speaker 3: which is rabid gentrification. A lot of these formerly uninhabitable
39:58
Speaker 3: or very very highly dangerous places, burnt out buildings, abandoned locations,
40:04
Speaker 3: have now been cleared out of squatters, you know, very
40:08
Speaker 3: low income homeless people that are living there illegally. They
40:12
Speaker 3: have all been cleared out to make way for developers.
40:17
Speaker 3: There is an area, as an article on CNN called
40:19
Speaker 3: Johannesburg's crime hotspot transformed to hipster hangout that's very familiar
40:25
Speaker 3: to where we're sitting right here, in a place called
40:27
Speaker 3: Pont City Market in Atlanta on a street called Ponce
40:29
Speaker 3: de lay On that used to be very dangerous and
40:33
Speaker 3: a lot of crime, and now it's kind of a
40:36
Speaker 3: lot of that's been swept away and replaced by bougie
40:39
Speaker 3: hipster malls, and that same thing is happening in Johannesburg.
40:44
Speaker 1: Activists are referring to this as spatial apartheid and calling
40:49
Speaker 1: for occupations of Cape Town. There's there's another article from
40:55
Speaker 1: the Guardian, whom I found had a lot of great
40:57
Speaker 1: reporting on this by Alice mc cool that examines how
41:03
Speaker 1: these housing activists are taking over a nurses home, a
41:06
Speaker 1: hospital and attempting to gain national and international recognition of
41:13
Speaker 1: the housing problem, both in terms of affordability, in terms
41:17
Speaker 1: of gentrification, and in terms of historical land theft, which
41:22
Speaker 1: is you know what happened?
41:23
Speaker 3: Well, of course I saw a thing in this article
41:25
Speaker 3: from CNN about how these developers are now looking at
41:29
Speaker 3: Johannesburg as a super hotspot for buying up real estate.
41:35
Speaker 3: One developer in particular, who is doing a project called
41:39
Speaker 3: Arts on Main in a precinct called the Mobonang which
41:43
Speaker 3: means place of Light, talks about these stats. He says
41:47
Speaker 3: it's paid off financially, but it will pay off more
41:49
Speaker 3: in the medium to long term. And this is a
41:52
Speaker 3: developer by the name of Jonathan Leebman who is kind
41:55
Speaker 3: of making this his a big project of his. Apparently,
41:58
Speaker 3: apartments now can get one between the range of two
42:01
Speaker 3: hundred and eighty thousand RAN or about twenty eight thousand
42:04
Speaker 3: dollars American to three million RAN, which is about three
42:08
Speaker 3: hundred thousand and Libman says that these prices in Johannesburg
42:12
Speaker 3: are skyrocketing so he can buy up buildings. He said
42:16
Speaker 3: he used to be'd pay one hundred euros a square
42:18
Speaker 3: meter for a building, and now because of the efforts
42:21
Speaker 3: of guys like him, the prices are going through the roof.
42:25
Speaker 1: And in twenty eleven the government tried to combat this
42:28
Speaker 1: by ruling that local councils local governments essentially are required
42:34
Speaker 1: to house anyone evicted to make room for a private
42:37
Speaker 1: or public development. But the problem is, according to activists,
42:41
Speaker 1: that the authorities who are charged with this responsibility only
42:45
Speaker 1: provide overcrowded blocks where families are still forcibly split up,
42:50
Speaker 1: or squalid slums essentially, and even those only meet a
42:55
Speaker 1: fraction of the demand.
42:57
Speaker 3: So we can.
42:58
Speaker 1: See with this, with the ecology the environment in which
43:04
Speaker 1: these events occur, we can see how injustice becomes a
43:09
Speaker 1: daily part of almost every human being's life, right at
43:13
Speaker 1: least for that time. And so of course there is
43:16
Speaker 1: something tremendously powerful and cathartic about seeing justice done. Both
43:24
Speaker 1: for oddly enough the speculation, but both the pro apartheid
43:28
Speaker 1: racist forces, the authoritarians or the empire from your earlier comparison,
43:33
Speaker 1: and the rebel forces or the people fighting for equality
43:37
Speaker 1: both saw something in Max the gorilla because they saw
43:42
Speaker 1: rule of law.
43:43
Speaker 3: Right.
43:44
Speaker 1: If you're pro police, you're seeing like, oh, look, rule
43:47
Speaker 1: of law. The authorities won. If you're anti police, you're saying, oh, look,
43:54
Speaker 1: finally someone who can do the job. And because of this,
44:00
Speaker 1: for a time, Max becomes this universally lauded figure. And
44:07
Speaker 1: Isaac the unfortunate, Isaac Mofolkung who goes to jail he has.
44:13
Speaker 3: Captured a forty year sentence, got a forty year sentence.
44:17
Speaker 3: A judge referred to him as an unguided missile, a
44:20
Speaker 3: loose cannon, a time bomb, because he had had just
44:24
Speaker 3: a rap sheet, a very thick one, let's say that.
44:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, And he eventually passed away in a psychiatric hospital.
44:33
Speaker 1: But you and I were talking off air about this nool.
44:35
Speaker 1: There were some suspicious circumstances to his death.
44:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, Supposedly his sister got a call I believe it
44:41
Speaker 3: was his sister from somebody from the facility saying that
44:44
Speaker 3: he had passed away after vomiting and collapsing. But then
44:49
Speaker 3: when they got to the hospital, the story changed to
44:52
Speaker 3: this idea that he had stolen a fistful of another
44:57
Speaker 3: patient's medication. When they come around with those trays, I
44:59
Speaker 3: guess with the pills and the cups and gobble them down,
45:03
Speaker 3: attempting suicide and succeeding. But the circumstances are a little murky,
45:08
Speaker 3: and it's this The whole story is a little strange.
45:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you have to put yourself in the family's position.
45:14
Speaker 1: How else can you react but with suspicion when someone
45:19
Speaker 1: tells you one story about your loved one's death and
45:22
Speaker 1: then they tell you a completely different story.
45:25
Speaker 3: So there remains.
45:28
Speaker 1: From that family's perspective and unsolved mystery regarding the shooter.
45:33
Speaker 3: Of Max the gorilla.
45:34
Speaker 1: Regarding Isaac, we should also say Max's story doesn't end
45:43
Speaker 1: when he gets those endorsements. We have more news about
45:46
Speaker 1: Max the Gorilla Well.
45:47
Speaker 3: He was voted Newsmaker of the Year for South Africa
45:51
Speaker 3: for nineteen ninety seven the Johannesburg Press Club. He was
45:54
Speaker 3: twenty six years old at the time. We should mention
45:57
Speaker 3: name this national gorilla hero. It's new Maker of nineteen
46:01
Speaker 3: ninety seven, and they presented him a giant trophy a
46:04
Speaker 3: meter high made of cake and fruit that he devoured
46:08
Speaker 3: on camera like promptly right, super good photo op.
46:11
Speaker 1: Max went on to live at the Johannesburg Zoo as
46:15
Speaker 1: a symbol of justice, a symbol that something could be
46:19
Speaker 1: right in the world until the age of thirty four,
46:24
Speaker 1: which was pretty good for a gorilla. Not ben where
46:27
Speaker 1: he passed away in his sleep in two thousand and four.
46:31
Speaker 3: I want to say yeah, I believe it was from
46:32
Speaker 3: cardiac arrest, which is apparently a pretty common way for
46:36
Speaker 3: elderly gorillas to go.
46:38
Speaker 1: We did find a funny story about his love life.
46:40
Speaker 1: Do you think we got time to throw that in?
46:41
Speaker 3: Let's toss it in. Okay, Okay, So.
46:44
Speaker 1: Max the Gorilla did show up in the news for
46:48
Speaker 1: at least one non crime related thing, non advertisement related thing.
46:54
Speaker 1: We found a story about his love life that has
47:01
Speaker 1: there's some pretty interesting language in here. But Max's partner Lisa,
47:05
Speaker 1: who who he was protecting.
47:07
Speaker 3: He was protecting yeah from from Isaac?
47:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Max and Lisa were still together. This
47:12
Speaker 1: was a long running relationship and uh, some journalists believed
47:18
Speaker 1: that they had perhaps lost the spark because Max stopped
47:24
Speaker 1: being interested in intimacy with Lisa.
47:26
Speaker 3: Yeah. There's an article from Independent Online, Max the Gorilla
47:30
Speaker 3: Refuses to Mate where they talk about this issue and
47:34
Speaker 3: how the gorilla scientists there at the Johannesburg Zoo, because
47:38
Speaker 3: that's a job, even considered dosing old Max, possibly in
47:42
Speaker 3: a gatorade equivalent to drink with some viagra integrate integate energy.
47:49
Speaker 3: Let us know, right, listeners, let us know how to pronounce.
47:53
Speaker 3: But apparently gorillas in general don't really they're not really
47:58
Speaker 3: that into sex in the first place. So once the
48:01
Speaker 3: spark is gone, the thrill is gone, my friend, it's
48:03
Speaker 3: gone for good.
48:05
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then Max, as we said, passed away peacefully
48:10
Speaker 1: in his sleep. That's a happy ending for him and
48:14
Speaker 1: his widow. Then Lisa continued on for about two years.
48:21
Speaker 1: She had another partner, a nineteen year old named Macoco,
48:25
Speaker 1: young Buck young Buck, the Boy Toy, and Lisa passed
48:30
Speaker 1: away in two thousand and six at the age of
48:34
Speaker 1: thirty five. She had during a surgery to determine whether
48:39
Speaker 1: or not she had a cancer's growth. Yeah, but neither
48:43
Speaker 1: of them died of gunshot wounds.
48:45
Speaker 3: That's very true. And to this day, there is a
48:48
Speaker 3: statue commemorating Max the Gorilla at the Johannesburg Zoo that
48:53
Speaker 3: you can go visit in his honor.
48:55
Speaker 1: And thus concludes our story of Max the Gorilla. We
48:59
Speaker 1: found so many other amazing things. I had a really
49:04
Speaker 1: tough time not putting in more stories of animals doing
49:09
Speaker 1: heroic stuff with humans.
49:11
Speaker 3: I know there's a lot there, but you know, we
49:13
Speaker 3: kind of we took a pretty dark turn in this
49:15
Speaker 3: one and really needed that context in that background, and
49:18
Speaker 3: I'm glad we did. It's a little intense, but it
49:21
Speaker 3: also shows that the nineties totally historical time, my friend, Yeah,
49:27
Speaker 3: for more reasons than just like trapper keepers and.
49:29
Speaker 1: Stuff across the world, guatemal in civil war, for instance.
49:32
Speaker 1: You know, So we would like to thank you so
49:35
Speaker 1: much for spending some time with us today. We know
49:38
Speaker 1: this episode went a little bit long, but we wanted to.
49:41
Speaker 1: We wanted to explore as much as we could the
49:43
Speaker 1: story behind the story, which too often gets forgotten or
49:48
Speaker 1: relegated to a footnote in a history book.
49:51
Speaker 3: And we of course would like to hear from you.
49:54
Speaker 1: You can find NOL, super producer, Casey and I all
49:57
Speaker 1: over the internet. We're on instant, We're on Facebook. Check
50:01
Speaker 1: us out at Ridiculous Historians where you can. You can
50:05
Speaker 1: find us hanging out in the forums, posing and answering
50:08
Speaker 1: very strange questions.
50:09
Speaker 3: We also might be posing as other users creeping. Oh really,
50:16
Speaker 3: I have a pseudo account? Yeah, did you start one?
50:19
Speaker 3: I can tell you the name though, because you'll know
50:20
Speaker 3: it's me. How's your picture's board coming? Ben? Oh? Yeah,
50:25
Speaker 3: well I had a vision board. Sorry, excuse me, how's
50:28
Speaker 3: your vision board coming? Thank you? It's it's a it
50:32
Speaker 3: just keeps getting bigger. Yeah, you got a lot of vision.
50:34
Speaker 1: It's yeah, it's it's an ongoing effort. I think a
50:38
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Historian.
50:39
Speaker 3: Facebook a big part of it. The Facebook group.
50:41
Speaker 1: I've got a picture of the Facebook group. I've got
50:43
Speaker 1: a picture of you and I and a helicopter, which
50:47
Speaker 1: I think could be really cool at some point.
50:50
Speaker 3: So we'd like to hear from you.
50:53
Speaker 1: What are some other examples that you remember from your
50:56
Speaker 1: neck of the Global Woods involving an animal doing something.
51:00
Speaker 3: Heroic, possibly in the nineties, Possibly in the nineties, Yes,
51:05
Speaker 3: bonus points in the nineties, but we will be interested
51:08
Speaker 3: in any time period, and it may end up on
51:11
Speaker 3: a future episode because I think we can make a
51:13
Speaker 3: really fascinating thing.
51:15
Speaker 1: It might have to be a list because there are
51:17
Speaker 1: so many, you know what, I gotta get out of here.
51:20
Speaker 3: I've got to trim down my list. I found like thirty.
51:22
Speaker 3: It's awesome memorial. Dam man. We should probably like go
51:24
Speaker 3: to the lake or something and get on a boat
51:27
Speaker 3: and take a helicopter to a boat. Yeah, oh man,
51:31
Speaker 3: let's take the ridiculous history copter, the ridicula copter. We
51:35
Speaker 3: have a helipad on the roof here upon city Market
51:37
Speaker 3: that is a true story, right next to the mini golf.
51:39
Speaker 1: Course, next to the mini golf course and the fancy
51:42
Speaker 1: hot dog stand.
51:44
Speaker 3: Yes, so we are going to get out of here.
51:46
Speaker 3: As always, thank you so much to.
51:48
Speaker 1: Our super producer, Casey Pegram, Thank you to Alex Williams
51:51
Speaker 1: who composed the.
51:52
Speaker 3: Track, and huge thanks as always to our top notch grade,
51:56
Speaker 3: a one of a kind researcher Christopher Hasiotis who hit
52:00
Speaker 3: us to the harrowing story of Max the Gorilla. See
52:04
Speaker 3: you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
52:10
Speaker 3: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
52:13
Speaker 3: your favorite shows.