Now that Mandela is gone, he is once again with us. It has always been like that. Even in prison, the world and his people only imagined him. Johny Clegg’s song “Asimbonanga” literally means “we have not seen you.” After prison, South Africa saw him only for nine years, between his release in 1990 and …
Expensive ‘fair’ chocolate does not benefit cocoa farmers. In a six-month transnational project led by the Forum for African Investigative Reporters (FAIR), journalists hailing from Ivory Coast, Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria and the Netherlands investigated the alleged benefits received by cocoa farmers in West Africa via the FAIRTRADE label. Their conclusions are shocking: whilst the chocolate …
A friend sent me some articles that appeared recently in the Cape Times. They deal with the murder of Dulcie September, ANC-representative in Paris, then, in 1988. The murder, of the middle-aged former schoolteacher who fought apartheid, is quite some time ago (25 years next year) indeed. And it is still unresolved. So far, the …
Dulcie September and the non-existent ‘death squads in Europe’ Read More »
From the dreadlocked guy from New York who went to India to fight ‘cannibalism’, to the Dutch development workers who asked African reporters ‘if they were Aids-aware’ (after the reporters had just lost three colleagues to Aids), to the German who came to teach West African political editors about West African politics, to the Canadian …
This article was first published on www.gijn.org ‘Normal’ media don’t do investigative journalism anymore. That is why we need non-profit institutions, specially geared and equipped to investigate public interest issues. They will fill the gap. The position, taken by many in the Global Investigative Journalism Network, sounds so logical: if ‘normal’ media won’t do it, …
Why ‘institutes of excellence’ won’t address the African publics’ information needs Read More »
After an outburst of protests from governing party and traditionalists against a painting of a naked Jacob Zuma, the countries’ lefties are upset. Sixteen-year old South Africa has ‘failed’, says a former white politician, who in the past spoke out against apartheid. ‘This is not progress’, says a media guru with a similar anti-apartheid-outspokenness history. …
Forward ever, backward never: the naked Zuma and the progress of outrage Read More »
And another thing. “I am not invisible”, tweets a teenager from the region in Uganda where Kony was active up to 6 years ago. “I am Acholi”. Which, maybe, indicates the real damage done to this childs’ peers in the US, Europe and wherever else ‘invisible children’ are trending. The publics’ strings are pulled in …
Joseph Kony is on Twitter now. It’s probably not him but it could be. “I give children belonging and respect”, he tweets. If the StopKony campaign has had one result, it is now that all of us, really all of us, are debating on social media. No mean feat. So I am here too. And …
What do Kony and StopKony give our children that we don’t? Read More »
The state is where the stuff is and theft is the only way to get it On the subject of Africa, the world seems intrigued by the question whether ‘it’ will ever work. ‘It’ can be the economy, or the production, or the output from the various professions, but in most of the debates ‘it’ …
In September 1983, in Mexico City, 17 year old Hortensia Aguilar gave birth to twins in secret and alone. Having hidden the pregnancy from her catholic family -who never educated her about sex-, with no support from a fly-by-night boyfriend and living in extreme poverty, she buried the newborns alive in the same field where …