“The fact that I am working for CNN says a lot for e.tv,” says Nkepile Mabuse, a CNN journalist based at the news network’s Johannesburg bureau. “While I learnt a lot from e.tv, it was such a small player and budgets were tighter. When [post-election violence in] Kenya broke out, for example, e.tv wasn’t there [to cover it] and Kenya just went on and on. When you have no budget, you have to make a decision whether to pull out of a story and you have to pick and choose your stories. Here, it is the story that dictates the budgets.”
Mabuse spent eight years at e.tv, starting out as a reporter and eventually ending up as an executive producer for current affairs programme 3rd Degree. “It is pressure but a different kind of pressure,” she says about the recent move, explaining the various deadlines she has to adhere to on a daily basis. “When you have one bulletin, you basically have one deadline,” she says, speaking from the network’s Milpark studios, between discussing travel plans to Botswana with cameraman Shevan Rayson. “With CNN we work around the clock because it’s a 24-hour station. And we don’t cover South Africa only, but stories with a resonance.”
With CNN increasingly becoming a multimedia network, beyond filing packages and recording live updates of stories, Mabuse also has to write stories for CNN’s website and give interviews for podcasts. But the “different kind of pressure” could also refer to the negative attitude she sometimes encounters representing an American broadcaster in Africa. “When people watch e-News they believe they are getting hard-hitting news; with SABC they believe they are getting a government mouth-piece, I’ve been here for about two months and the perception of CNN is that it is American and the United States just does not have a good reputation. But as a journalist you create your own reputation — people still expect the same quality, fearlessness and objectivity from me.”
Of course, Kim Norgaard, the bureau chief, will not tell you that CNN’s expansion into Africa is just the latest episode in a scramble that has everything to do with competitiveness in the media market. While the expansion has been primarily self-serving, it has inspired stories that are a departure from the staple diet of sorrow, tears and blood. “Recently on Inside Africa, we did a half-hour story on how cellphones are changing Africa. In Kenya, a lot of hate messages were being distributed by cellphone while in South Africa, cellphones can remind you to take your medicine,” explains Nargaard. “So it was nice to be able to show the rest of the world the different ways in which Africa has adapted cellphone technology.”
Some of the recent colour features have included coverage of the Jo’burg Art Fair, with one story focusing on the work of Lawrence Lemaoana, which challenges black male stereotypes. There was also a package about Athania Mothiba, a black female Harley Davidson enthusiast who is a hairdresser by day.
On the day I visited the bureau, however, a cameraman was being trained for an undercover mission to Zimbabwe ahead of the elections, and Mabuse and Rayson were discussing their itinerary for a story in Botswana on Zimbabweans refugees crossing the border.
“Part of the expansion is about the ownership of material, just being able to do a better job using your own people and your own resources,” says Norgaard.
The core news production team at the bureau consists of Norgaard, Mabuse, Rayson, producer Tom Wende and South African reporter Robyn Curnow who was previously based in London. “It’s great to be back home because I know South African stories,” Curnow says. “But these stories are universal, because it is the human condition you’re reporting on: the pain, the tragedy, the humour and the drama.”