COP17 Durban

2011 ended rather stressfully, with me covering the international climate change summit COP17 in Durban, South Africa, in December. Not only did the conference end up being one of the longest global summits in history - initially scheduled for 12 days it went almost 2 full days over time! I also faced the added difficult task of having to report complex scientific and political issues in both German and English, under severe deadline pressures. One 14-hour workday followed the next, and the occasions when I was able to leave the conference centre before dark were rare.

But it was an exciting 2 weeks nonetheless, sometimes even fun. I had the pleasure of briefly meeting United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon (see pic), reconnected with many (new and old) journalist colleagues and networked with a number of interesting people from the politicial, scientific and NGO sectors. Still, I must admit I'm glad there's only one climate summit each year (and I only have to cover those on African soil)!

Child poverty Lesotho

The tiny mountain kingdom of Lesotho and its 1.8 million people have pretty much fallen off the map. Entirely enclosed - and it seems almost suffocated by - South Africa, the constitutional monarchy doesn't feature much in international news or global political agendas. And so nobody had really noticed how drastically poverty has increased in this nation, where now every second child is destitute.

Flagging economic fortunes and a persistent AIDS pandemic have devastated the southern African nation, leaving little hope it will ever be able to pull itself out of its bleak poverty trap. Every fourth child here is orphaned.

The granny in this photo lives with her two granddaughters in a dark, crowded mudhouse, struggling to provide even one warm meal for her family a day. Like thousands of other children, the girls are chronically malnourished and mostly go to school on an empty stomach.

While the whole world has been anxiously following the grave humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa for the past months, hardly anyone has noticed that Lesotho, too, has become one of the worst places in the world to be a child.

DR Congo

I spent 10 days travelling through the Democratic Repubic of Congo (DRC) in mid-October - spending time in North and South Kivu, the country's mineral-rich and war-torn East, as well as in capital Kinshasa - to find out more about the pre-election atmosphere in the country.

The DRC will hold its second democratic elections on November 28. Only that this time around, it will have to manage without massive support from the United Nations and the West. Six weeks before the polls, tensions were already running high. In the countries east, rebel attacks remain the order of the day, while a corrupt military and police force are regarded as enemies, not offering protection to its people. No matter to which side of the political spectrum I spoke, hardly anyone expects free, fair and peaceful elections. Many feel abandonned by the West, which many believe has a vested interest in keeping the DRC politically unstable to secure its continuous and cheap access to the central African country's vast natural resources.

It was disheartening to work in a country that, as a fellow correspondent once wrote, "seems to have fallen victim to a paradox of sub-Sharan Africa: that countries with the greatest natural assets are doomed to war and stagnation, while nations with nothing somehow prove better at building contented societies. The richer the nation, the more spoils to fight over." But what gave hope was that quite a number of exiled, highly educated Congolese have returned to their country and are actively involved in trying to turn its politics around. Perhaps not all is lost after all...

Child tobacco labour

In late February, I went to Malawi to research an investigative feature about the country's child tobacco labourers. The children are not only exploited, but the work is also extremely dangerous to their health.

One can imagine that the Malawian government was not too keen to have international news coverage on the issue. They had told tobacco farmers not to speak to journalists, in the same month that they passed a new media bill that allows them to shut down publications without having to provide reasons. A few weeks later, President Bingu wa Mutharika announced everyone who criticises him would "be beaten".

Due to the questionable human rights situation in the country, a group of international donors, including Germany, the US, Japan, France and the UK, had sent an open letter of concern to the Malawian government. Some countries are now withholding aid money.

It was in this atmosphere of a crumbling 'democracy' that I did my research about child tobacco labour. I was ignored by some, shunned and threatened by others, but in the end, I managed to find enough sources that were willing to talk. I left with a great story and photos proving it.

Granted

I am the proud recipient of 1 of 10 grants the Fund for Investigative Journalism in Washington DC gives to journalists each year. The grant is used to finance research for an investigative news story that would otherwise be difficult to realise. Mine will bring me to Malawi, where I am planning to uncover the working conditions of child labourers on tobacco farms. I can't disclose much more than that right now, but will post the full story by the end of February.

Click here to see the official announcement.

Heroin and Seaweed

I spent the last 3 weeks on tropical island Zanzibar and returned with two surprising stories.

1) The holiday island has a huge heroin problem, with one in ten of its 1 million inhabitants using the drug. When night falls, the narrow lanes of Stonetown became dark hiding places for addicts. Heroin is incredibly cheap on the island, which lies on a major trade route from Afghanistan, through India, to East Africa. The Zanzibari government is trying to keep the issue quiet, since its economy heavily relies on tourism.

2) One of the other foreign currency earners in Zanzibar is seaweed farming. It's not only used for Sushi but mainly as a gelling agent in toothpastes, cremes and medication. Who would have thought?! It's also a key income-generation opportunity for unskilled women on the island.

Hungry

Five-year-old Fatime and her mother Halime sit on a thin, shabby mattress in a hospital in central-african Chad. Fatime is severely, acutely malnourished and weighs only 7.5kgs - half of what she should weigh. The family are nomads in the Sahel desert, where climate change has reduced rainfalls and temperatures reach up to 50 degrees Celcius. Thousands of people are starving here and there is very little access to live-saving services. Halime had to hitchhike with her dying child on the roofs of trucks for 700 kilometres, over 5 days, to reach the nearest clinic. It was one of my most heart-breaking experiences to interview Halime and Fatime. For more photos from my trip to Chad, click here.

Corresponding

Since early November, I am working as a foreign correspondent for Swiss news agency Textagentur Cafe Europe, which sells articles to a wide range of German-language print media in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Luxembourg. My articles are now published in Berliner Zeitung, der Standard, Wiener Zeitung and many other newspapers and magazines.

Training journalists

In early October, I was hired by international news agency Inter Press Service (IPS) to train 15 journalists from all over southern Africa on how to report on climate change and water issues. We flew to Maun, a small town on Botswana's Okavango Delta for some hands-on training sessions on how the people who live along the river have been affected by climate change.

The training also coinciced with a conference on climate change, the South African Development Community (SADC) Multi-Stakeholder Water Dialogue. Together with the newly trained journalists, we produced a conference newspaper, which reports on the latest water and climate change policies and strategies in southern Africa.

Touring Malawi

In August, the trip to Malawi, which was part of the Red Cross journalism award (see two entries below) last year, finally came through. I had a fascinating ten days of visiting several humanitarian projects throughout the country.

First, we talked to rural farmers about food security, malnutrition and survival. Paddle pump as well as solar and wind-powered irrigation system will hopefully help these farmers to boost their harvests and gain sustainable livelihoods.

A day later, we visited Malawi's only refugee camp, Dzaleka, where more than 11,000 Africans who had to flee their countries live together. Living conditions are tough here, and alcohol abuse and domestic violence are rife. I interviewed a 13-year-old girl who was raped by her stepfather and, nine months later, gave birth to his child.

We also travelled all the way to Karonga, in the northern tip of the country, where two earthquakes in December 2009 caused thousands of homes to crumble. The recovery and reconstruction process has been slow, with those affected still living in tents and makeshift constructions, ten months after the disaster. What's worse is that they are running out of time: What is not finished before the start of the rainy season in November will have to wait until March or April next year.

To see photos of the trip, click here.

Book Launch

'What is Left Unsaid: Reporting the South African HIV Epidemic' is a book I conceptualised and edited in 2009/2010. It's content is based on selected journalism, research and anaylis produced by fellows of the HIV & the Media Project, a programme run by the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

'What is Left Unsaid' will be available in bookstores from September and we will have launch events in Johannesburg and Cape Town. Look out for it.

In the News

Last month, I was interviewed about freelancing in South Africa by British media magazine Press Gazette:

Postcard from Cape Town, South Africa

With freelance journalist Kristin Palitza

Why South Africa?

Initially, I came here on a year’s sabbatical, to volunteer in a township day care centre for HIV- positive kids and AIDS orphans. That was eight years ago. I became extremely interested in socio- political issues, ranging from health to education, poverty, housing, water/sanitation and food security. So I started writing about these topics for German as well as South African newspapers.

Click to read more ...

Honoured

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.

Orange River Blues

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.

Threatened Wildflower Wonder

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.

Reporting on Poverty

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.

Book publishing

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!  

Portraying life

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.

WEF - Widespread Economic Failure

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.

Goodbye Brenda

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.