True Crime South Africa is the first victim-focused true-crime podcast in the country. Host, Nicole Engelbrecht, researches each case herself using media coverage, trial footage, social media sources and often by talking to some of the individuals involved. Using her skills as a creative writer and her passion for true crime, she crafts each script to ensure that listeners are given a deep dive into the case mechanics as well as an understanding of the victims as human beings. The podcast covers both solved and unsolved South African true crime cases. The unsolved cases are often cold cases which can benefit from awareness being brought to them. This concept has been used in the US for many years and to great success. The listenership formed around true crime podcasts becomes a community that advocates for victims and resolution for families. South African victims now have their own voice too. True Crime South Africa publishes weekly, alternating between full-length case episodes and shorter minisodes which discuss true crime cases that are currently in the media. The podcast launched on the 22nd of June 2019 and is making waves in the South African podcast community...
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Podcast: Episode 1 – The Murder of Charmaine Mare
I chose Charmaine’s story to cover first because I hadn’t heard about the case before I saw it on a short documentary on television. I was surprised as I tend to follow cases like these quite voraciously but then I realised that Charmaine’s murder took place just a month before Oscar Pistorius shot Reeva Steenkamp in February 2013. Even non-true crime junkies know how that case exploded all over the media so Charmaine was pushed aside, her story relegated to third-page news, while South Africa took in every salacious detail of the Oscar trial. Charmaine’s story is, therefore, a perfect example of the type of case I want to cover here on True Crime South Africa. She may not have been famous or a model or dating a superstar athlete, but Charmaine deserved the same support from the public as Reeva did for they were both taken far too soon, and neither deserved the horrendous endings they got. This is Charmaine’s story.