Coming up on
Carte Blanche this Sunday 24 August 2025:
Marimba Jam
1,177 people - mostly school-aged - gather to challenge the world record for the largest group of marimba players making music together.
They are from vastly different backgrounds, but they find common bonds through the instrument they share.
Behind the attempt is a female-driven social enterprise that has created a decade-long musical outreach through the marimba.
Meanwhile, in a small factory, players-turned-manufacturers rush to build instruments for the record attempt. And at the centre of it all is a beloved instrument creating unity through harmony.
Producer: Marion Edmunds
Presenter: Erin Bates
Flash fact: The collective broke the Guinness World Record for Largest Marimba Ensemble on 2 August 2025, at Grand Arena, GrandWest in Cape Town
Shadow King
A story of murder and corruption, a king in exile, and a community fighting for its ancestral land.
In the Platinum Belt, the Bakgatla-ba-Kgafela were once poised to be one of the country’s wealthiest communities.
Forced from their land under colonialism and apartheid, they hoped for economic development under the new government in 1994.
Instead, billions continue to flow from luxury resorts and mines on Bakgatla land, allegedly siphoned by political elites led by a tribal appointee accused of betraying the crown and forcing the King into exile.
Now, the Bakgatla are fighting to reclaim their land, expose corruption, and restore what was stolen.
Producer: Anina Peens
Presenter: Erin Bates
Borderline Claims
Are South Africans fleeing danger, or gaming Europe’s asylum system?
In the last decade, thousands of South Africans have sought asylum in Ireland. They claim they’re fleeing gang violence, crime and discrimination. But South Africa is officially listed as a safe country of origin by Ireland.
As refugees face pushback from movements protesting provision of scarce housing and government resources to immigrants, some families now face deportation.
Are genuine victims falling through the cracks of a rigid system, or are some South Africans exploiting legal grey areas in an over-stretched asylum system?
Producer & Presenter: Nickolaus Bauer
Premiere episodes of Carte Blanche air on M-Net on Sundays at 19h00 and are on Catch Up afterwards.