Sizwe Mpofu Walsh.
Image: Instagram
When Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh strides on-camera for his digital talk-show-podcast hybrid, he brings a precision that often feels more neuroscience lecture than afternoon catch-up.
The Oxford-trained International Relations scholar turned media-entrepreneur has quietly built one of South Africa’s most influential current-affairs forums: SMWX (pronounced “S-M-W-X: the Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh eXperience”)
After serving as SRC president at the University of Cape Town in 2010, and completing an MPhil and DPhil at the University of Oxford, Mpofu-Walsh joined the academy at the University of the Witwatersrand while concurrently building his public voice.
His first book, Democracy and Delusion: 10 Myths in South African Politics and his second, The New Apartheid, established him as both scholar and provocateur.
But what sets him apart is how he translated that intellectual grounding into a media vehicle capable of real reach and impact, SMWX.
SMWX launched in the run-up to the 2019 SA national election, backed by the South African Media Innovation Programme (SAMIP).
On YouTube alone, the official channel now lists approximately 347,000 subscribers, over 56 million total views across some 700+ videos.
While detailed platform-by-platform streaming numbers (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, TikTok, etc.) are not public, the YouTube metric alone signals serious engagement.
On Apple Podcasts, the show is listed among the top “Men’s Podcasts” for South Africa in 2025.
Social-media snapshots suggest further momentum: in September 2025, Mpofu-Walsh shared on Instagram that the YouTube channel had reached 300 000+ subs.
Mpofu-Walsh seems to interview figures who traditionally speak to insiders, but he frames them for a wider audience, packaging long-form commentary into social-friendly snippets that magnify reach.
At a time when South Africa confronts deep structural issues, inequality, corruption, and social fragmentation, SMWX has become one of the few consistently agile platforms that bring serious conversation to wide audiences.
In terms of his career so far, Mpofu-Walsh’s story offers a compelling case study of a scholar born from activism who built a digital-media brand on purpose, voice and reach.
In an age where “thought leadership” often lives in newsletters or LinkedIn posts, he shows how you can build a multi-platform, multi-modal content business rooted in social commentary and scale it.
For media operators, creators, and founders alike, his path perhaps offers a blueprint: domain expertise added with platform control and audience architecture leads to major influence in the podcast space.
Mpofu-Walsh hasn’t just become a pundit; he’s become a media brand anchored in purpose. And for that reason, he’s someone worth watching, for both what he says and how he built the vehicle to say it.