In November 2009, I was given the International Federation of the Red Cross Good News award for humanitarian reporting in Africa. It was awarded to me for a feature article I wrote for the Mail & Guardian, called 'Gardening for Life'.

The best thing about the award is the prize: A working trip to Malawi early next year, to report about a food security and a gender-based violence programme.

This month, I am working on a media kit to inform journalists about the Orange-Senqu River Commission (ORASECOM), which was established by the governments of Lesotho, South Africa, Botswana and Namibia to create enviornmental sustainability of the Orange River basin.

It's a big and exciting initiative that aims to tackle a wide range of environmental issues, inlcuding the protection of the basin, optimal use of the river, Southern Africa's water footprint, job creation and climate change. Some major funding organisations, like the European Union and GTZ, have pooled their resources to support the initiative.

I am producing a fully-fledged media kit that will help journalists to report in-depth on the work ORASECOM is doing. It will include everything from fact sheets, press releases, an info booklet, a brief history of the commission and an overview of the many projects that are happening to conserve the river. Hopefully, we'll see some interesting reporting come out of this.

 

 

Once a year, in the African spring, a dry and barren area in South Africa's Northern Cape, called Namaqualand, turns into a lush and luminant carpet of wildflowers. Tourists come from all over South Africa, Europe and even Japan to witness this natural spectacle.

But nobody knows how long we will still be able to experience the phenomenon. Environmental experts warn that changing rainfall and temperature patterns caused by climate change will soon diminish the vastness of flowers of Namaqualand, which is one of the world's top biodiversity hot spots. Already, many of the 1350 different flower species that can be found here are either rare or threatened by extinction.

Last weekend, I drove up to Nieuwoudtville, Namaqualand's bulb capital, to observe the flower spectacle. I spoke to various ecologists, botanists and climate change experts to find out about the true state of affairs of the flower kingdom and how long we will still be able to enjoy the phenomenon. The article will be published in The Weekender this Saturday.

Panos, an international media organisation, asked me to produce a poverty reporting toolkit for Mozambican journalists. The 20-page manual will be used as a training tool for junior to mid-level reporters in various media workshops in and around Maputo.

The toolkit gives journalists useful tips on how to report sensibly on poverty-related issues, find interesting story angles, understand and scrutinise the effectiveness of poverty policies and hold governments, international organisations and NGOs accountable. It also has an extensive resource section with useful contacts and background information.

I hope the toolkit will contribute to creating a league of reporters writing interesting, in-depth articles on a wide variety of poverty-related issues, economic growth and sustainability.

 

I have been commissioned to conceptualise, edit and produce a book for the HIV/AIDS & the Media Project, a fellowship programme run by the Department of Journalism and the Perinatal Health Research Unit (PHRU) of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

The book will include journalism (print & broadcast) and research based on work people have produced during fellowships with the Project between 2003 and 2009. One big section of the book will look at the role of the South African media with regard to HIV reporting, while the other main section of the book will be on specific HIV-related themes, such as stigma, traditional medicine, orphans and vulnerable children, etc.

This is an extremely exciting project. We are currently in the conceptualisation phase and I can't stop my mind from strategising and thinking up new ideas for putting the content together. The official book proposal is almost written, and we already have interest from a first publisher to look at it. I'll let you know when to look out for it on the bookstore shelves next year!  

 

Humanitarian organisation Catholic Welfare & Development (CWD) is celebrating it's 40th anniversary next year and have therefore asked me to write 40 portraits of people involved with the organisation. Over the next few weeks, I will be interviewing people affiliated with CWD on various different levels - from Archbishops, to directors, board members, staff, counsellors, community workers, volunteers and beneficiaries. Travelling to interviews will bring me to different locations: poor townships like Delft, Athlone, Gugulethu, Elsies River on the one hand, and well-off suburbs like Constantia, Rondebosch and Riebeck Casteel on the other.

So far, a number of people have shared very personal and beautiful stories with me. There is a woman who was molested as a child and found strength again thanks to CWD counselling, a pastor who went on tour through the United States to gather donations for the poor during Apartheid and a Congolese refugee who managed to heal his trauma through CWD youth art classes. Those are just a few examples out of the many beautiful stories that have come out of the interviews. CWD does indeed have reason to celebrate.

Last week, I covered the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Africa, which took place here in Cape Town. There was much talk about the global financial crisis and steps countries should take to manage or avert it. What was exchanged were mainly platitudes. My favourite one: ‘the crisis is not a challenge but an opportunity’. Yeah, right.

Many economists had suggestions for how the African continent could deal with the crisis. African countries should focus on a regional approach, diversify products and markets, reduce spending and avoid incurring new debt, they said. On the surface, this made perfect sense. But, of course, the minute one digs a bit deeper, one hits hard rock.

What wasn’t mentioned was the multitude of international instruments and trading agreements that are all tailored towards keeping Africa a) dependent and b) in debt. They will ensure the West’s access to Africa’s wealth of natural resources, and not only that. They will also foster perverse situations, such as the export of raw materials (valuable but cheap) used to manufacture products in the West, which are then resold for lots of money to Africa. Isn’t that just too clever?

Visually, the conference drew an interesting picture, too. Almost without exception, everyone was dressed in black suits (no blue, no brown, no beige). Even many of the journalists who covered the conference wore suits, which is highly unusual – journalists are infamous for being casually, and often badly, dressed. And almost everyone was male. The world changes very slowly if at all.

It was the 5th anniversary of South African music icoon Brenda Fassie's death, and her family and friends came together in Langa township, outside of Cape Town, where Brenda grew up and went to school, to remember her.

The Queen of African Pop, nicknamed by her fans Mabrr, died on 9 May 2004 after she fell into a coma from a cocaine overdose.

It was an emotional but celebratory afternoon, with Brenda's older brother and one of Brenda's childhood friends movingly recalling her life, school girls from Langa High School dancing to Brenda's songs and her brothers' band, The Fassie Brothers, performing on stage.

The Arch had us all charmed at the opening ceremony of the 4th South African AIDS Conference in Durban today – eloquent, funny and thoughtful as we know him – but he also had us enthralled with his outspokenness.

“I came here somewhat heavy-hearted about recent developments,” Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu told an audience of about 3,000 conference delegates, referring to South Africa’s refusal to grant the Dalai Lama a visa to enter the country.

What he didn’t say, but what was apparent to all, was that South African health minister Barbara Hogan didn’t share the stage with Tutu, as planned and announced in the programme, because she had criticised the ANC’s decision and might now face disciplinary action. Ironically, Hogan is said to be, at short notice, on a trip to China.

“At last we have a minister who behaves like other people when we face an epidemic of that kind,” said Tutu, lauding Hogan, while indirectly lashing out at her predecessor Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. “What has happened in the recent past has shattered me, and I salute our minister of health for [supporting the Dalai Lama],” he added.

Thanks, Arch, for being so frank and telling us what’s in your heart.

In mid-February I went to Rome to report from the Governing Council of the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD). We were hit with worrisome statistics: it will cost $30 billion a year to feed the world’s hungry – money that hasn’t been committed to be spend by anyone.

Climate change – droughts, floods, change in rainfall patterns – will worsen food insecurity around the world even further. The countries that will be most affected are, of course, in the global South (while climate change is mostly caused by the North). More than 20 million children suffer from malnutrition, and more than 50 million people lack access to water, to mention just a few consequences.

Ironically, those who suffer from hunger most are the ones who produce most of the world’s food – smallholder farmers. This is because investment in agriculture has gone down over the past two decades. As a result, we are far from meeting the first Millennium Development Goal that aims to halve hunger and poverty by 2015.

Even if we start doing something about climate change and hunger right now, we’ll have to live with the effects of it for the next 30 years, one expert said. When will the international organisations, like World Bank, and governments wake up and set long-term goals instead of chasing short-term profits?

Covering the World Health Organisation (WHO) Global Ministerial Forum in Bamako, Mali, did not come without its challenges. The conference was called largely to push the interests of huge international organisations, like World Bank, and promote investment in health systems research that will ultimately benefit the global economy.

Critics and nay-sayers were not invited to the conference, and there was little time allocated for Q&As during which journalists and delegates can ask pertinent questions. Needless to say, this made a journalist’s job of providing balanced coverage extremely difficult.

While WHO and Worldbank used the Bamako meeting to lament a huge health systems knowledge gap in Africa, critics say it is not African governments who lack knowledge, but the strategy of international institutions, such as World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) to undermine Africa's health through the policies they have imposed for the past two decades.

What basically happens is that World Bank and IMF use poor and highly indebted African countries’ dependency on their loans to control economic policy-making and have pushed African governments towards greater economic integration in international markets at the expense of social services and long-term development priorities.

Let’s hope the story beneath also finds its way into the international media…

This wonderful man works as a home-based carer in deep rural Qumbu near Umtata, in the Eastern Cape. He cooks, washes, cleans, helps HIV-positive persons to access treatment and orphans with their homework. A man in the kitchen (and wearing an apron!) is an unusual sight in a society where gender roles are clearly divided into men’s and women’s roles and ‘jobs’. Initially ridiculed by other men in his community, this man has now become a role model and a person they respect and look up to.

I spent the last two days interviewing men who have learnt about gender equality and decided to practise it on a daily basis. It’s amazing to see how, with a little effort and goodwill, gender stereotypes can be overcome and entire communities benefit from this new approach. Can’t wait to write the article…

For the next year, I will be editing a project on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for Inter Press Service, an international news agency focusing on social and humanitarian reporting. 

The MDG section will carry print features, podcasts, Q&As and analysis from all over Southern Africa on a wide variety of themes - poverty, education, women's rights and gender, environmental sustainability, child mortality, maternal health, HIV and malaria.

If you want to know how Southern African countries are doing in reaching the MDGs, this is the site to check out!

I am currently writing features and case studies for Sonke Gender Justice, a South African NGO doing some fantastic work around human rights, HIV and gender issues. This week, I drove out to Nkandla, in the heart of Zululand, to meet with some kids who participated in Sonke’s PhotoVoice project that makes children’s voices heard through photography and writing. 

One of the boys, Khayelethu Zondi (16), is very concerned about high levels of crime in his community and took a photo of signs outside of his school that prohibit firearms and other weapons. Next to the photo, he writes: “If am [sic] inside the school I feel safe because there are things that are not allowed to be inside. So we are all protected from bad things from out side [sic].”

Khayelethu knows his school is a safe environment for children, but he often feels vulnerable when walking the streets: “Sometimes I don’t feel safe because there are people that get drunk and get violent.”  

…photographing the stunningly beautiful beach of the Amatikulu Nature Reserve, an eco-tourism resort just 100 kilometres north of Durban. That’s where I spent a wonderful weekend researching a feature for South African Airways in-flight magazine Sawubona. It’s a very peaceful and romantic getaway with accommodation for 12 people only. 

A little while ago, I was interviewed by podcaster Tony Lankester about the ins and outs of blogging - as one of the contributors to the Mail & Guardian Thought Leader blog. We chatted about the inspiration to blog, how blogging integrates into journalism and how to deal with harsh comment writers. If you want to know more, listen to the podcast (no worries, it's just a couple of minutes long) or read my latest blogs on Thought Leader.

Perhaps some of you have seen me on SABC Morning Live yesterday. I was invited as a media expert to comment on how well (or not) the South African media cover women abuse. It’s a very important topic, for our society as a whole, and particularly for journalists who, like me, report on social issues.

On the upside, coverage has generally improved over the past few years – there has been more reporting on abuse and it has been done in a more sensitive and ethical manner. But there is still lots that can be done better. Two main points:

a)      There’s still far too much gender stereotyping: Stories on women abuse are almost always crime and horror stories in which women are identified as (helpless) victims. Often they are shown crying to add drama. Why not turn an abuse story into a positive life story, for example with focus on how a woman has overcome abuse and come out stronger?

b)     Articles about abuse mainly look at the crime alone and fail to relate it to the broader social context and issues, such as unemployment, poverty, health, education, public transport or housing. The media very rarely link sexual abuse to HIV/Aids, a topic that would urgently need attention in a country with one of the highest HIV prevalence rates in the world.

 

When I decided to leave my job as editor at Agenda in September in 2007, the decision didn’t come easy and I departed with a laughing and a crying eye. A laughing eye because I was looking forward to moving back into the commercial media sector and get involved once again in hands-on journalism. And a crying eye because I used to love producing this crucially important African women’s rights journal.

I am currently in Mexico City to cover the XVII International AIDS Conference - I have been very privileged to have been chosen by Panos as one of the six African journalists to produce the daily conference newspaper, Panoscope. 

This weekend, I went to interview refugees who sought shelter in one of the Durban churches because of the recent xenophobic violence in the country. 48 people, sharing two rooms, sleeping on thin mattresses, each of them owning just the few possessions they managed to carry. There is no privacy, and a recent outbreak of chickenpox has left most of the children ill. 

The refugees, most from Burundi and the DRC, have lost their homes, their jobs and are too scared to leave the church premises at night. Even during the day, short visits to the supermarket are marked by fear of being attacked. I talked for a long time to a man named Eric, who had to flee his apartment with his 3 year old daughter, a beautiful little girl, because her life had been threatened - because she is half Burundi, half South African. Her mother, a Xhosa, is not allowed by her family to stay with her daughter anymore. The injustice of it all breaks my heart.