In this section: Charlotte Bauer, Nikiwe Bikitsha, Coco Cachalia and more ….
Charlotte Bauer
Associate Editor
Mail & Guardian
Tel: +27 11 250 7300
www.mg.co.za
Charlotte Bauer is Associate Editor of the Mail & Guardian with responsibility for features, columns and the Voices of Africa project. Voices of Africa is the M&G‘s premium project to feature the best journalism from across the continent in order to reflect ‘how we live, not how we die” — a tagline she has developed for a series likely to be internationally syndicated.
Previously, she was director of Heritage Projects at the Sunday Times. The project was responsible for the commissioning and erection of a number of public artworks memorialising history where it happened.
Bauer also worked as the deputy editor of This Day newspaper and for 10 years at the Sunday Times in various capacities including journalist, editor and columnist. She was a Nieman fellow at Harvard University for 1997/98.
Nikiwe Bikitsha
News and Current Affairs Anchor
e.tv
Tel: +27 11 537 9300
www.etv.co.za
Nikiwe Bikitsha moved to e.tv in May this year to anchors news and the current affairs programme News Night with Jeremy Maggs. She has also gathered quite a following as a columnist with the Mail & Guardian. Prior to joining e.tv, she was a CNBC Africa achor and on SABC3’s Interface until 2007. Her foray into journalism began in 1997 as a junior reporter at a Cape Town radio station.
As one of the first journalists on the scene at the Planet Hollywood bombing, Bikitsha covered the story for international networks such as BBC and CNN. In 2001 she hosted e.tv’s breakfast show while at the same time holding her news anchor position at Talk Radio 702.
In 2004 Bikitsha followed president Thabo Mbeki around the country during the South African elections. In the same year she joined SAfm as co-anchor with John Perlman of the highly regarded current affairs programme AM Live.
Coco Cachalia
CEO
Kagiso TV & Communications
Tel: +27 11 544 1900
www.kagisotv.co.za
Coco Cachalia is CEO of Kagiso TV & Communications, a specialist company focusing on innovative, content-driven, integrated communication, dedicated to education and development in South Africa.
She is a media specialist with more than 20 years’ experience in communication management, publishing, training and communication media. Kagiso’s emphasis is on developing educational materials in all media, particularly TV and video, print, radio and the internet.
Cachalia hails from a family with strong political struggle credentials. She is an executive of the Independent Producers Organisation. Her interests include sport, for example, cricket, where she sat on the Cricket World Cup committee. She has an MA in social history (University of Essex, England) and BA (honours) political science (University of the Witwatersrand).
Jenny Crwys-Williams
Presenter
Radio 702
Tel: +27 11 506 3702
www.702.co.za
Radio 702 presenter Jenny Crwys-Williams is a South African institution in talk radio. ‘Radio journalism is the closest thing you can do in media to touching people. You hear them breathe, listen to them weep and short of holding them in your arms, you are with them. It’s unlike any other medium. And I don’t have to worry about the colour of my lipstick,” she says.
Her career as a journalist began in the United Kingdom when she was interested in butterflies and began writing about the large blue butterfly (nearly extinct) for The Field. After that, it was county magazines: a brilliant training ground because she learnt to do everything.
In South Africa she was once woman’s editor at The Natal Mercury and Johannesburg bureau chief at Cosmopolitan. She writes non-fiction books, among them In the Words of Nelson Mandela(1988) and runs a 3 000-strong book club, is mad about her vegetable garden, listens to music, walks in the zoo, cooks and fights about wine.
Robyn Curnow
CNN correspondent
Tel: +27 11 726 4251
www.cnn.com
Robyn Curnow is a correspondent for CNN, based at the network’s bureau in Johannesburg, South Africa. Having worked as a freelancer for the network previously, Curnow returned to CNN fulltime in early 2008, and subsequently won international awards for her coverage of the HIV/Aids epidemic in South Africa and for her hour-long documentary Mandela at 90 and presented CNN’s special coverage of the Zimbabwean election in March last year.
Curnow worked fi rst as a talented young journalist at the SABC before spreading her wings to the global networks. Prior to CNN she worked at the BBC as a reporter and producer.
As a freelance correspondent and anchor for CNN, she covered the death of Pope John Paul 11, the London bombings and the Asian tsunami.
Khanyi Dhlomo
Managing Director
Ndalo Media
Tel: +27 11 300 6734
www.destinyconnect.com
Khanyi Dhlomo is the MD of Ndalo Media, a print and digital media company that owns and publishes Destiny, Destiny Man and SportsTeen to be launched in September 2009. Ndalo Media is a joint venture between Khanyi and Media24.
Dhlomo is an award-winning former editor of True Love and former TV news and lifestyle anchor. In 2003 she was named one of the most influential women in media by The Media magazine. Dhlomo has worked in Paris as head of South African Tourism.
In 2007 she completed an MBA at Harvard Business School in the US. She also holds a certificate in Media Management from the University of Stellenbosch Business School and is a former alumnus of the year. She serves on the board of the Foschini Group as a non-executive director and is a member of the Advisory Council of the University of Stellenbosch Business School.
Paula Fray
Regional Director
Inter Press Service Africa
Tel: +27 11 341 0767
www.ipsnews.net/africa
Paula Fray is the Inter Press Service (IPS) regional director for Africa and manages the development news agency with writers in almost 50 African countries. Prior to joining IPS, she founded and managed Paula Fray & Associates, (now frayintermedia), a media training organisation focusing on training reporters and newsroom managers. frayintermedia also strives to empower civil society activists through practical media skills training.
An award-winning journalist who rose to become the first female editor of the Saturday Star newspaper in South Africa, she has wide-ranging consultancy and project management experience in media. A recipient of the prestigious Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University, she serves on the Nieman Foundation Advisory Board.
Fray is also the chairperson of the frayintermedia advisory board and serves on the Kgolo Trust. In 2008 Fray was voted on to the IPS International Association board of directors.
Sandra Gordon
Publisher
The Media
Tel: +27 11 447 8113
www.themedia.co.za
Publisher Sandra Gordon has vast experience in media, marketing, advertising and public relations. She began her career in the banking sector, holding positions in media, advertising and public relations before launching a magazine publishing business in 1986. She sold this to the Primedia Group in 1995 and served on its main board for four years until she joined film and TV production company Sasani Ltd as CEO.
Gordon is founder shareholder and is actively involved in the Iconic Group of companies, consisting of a strategic communications consultancy (Stone Soup), an advertising agency (Ideaology) and a publishing company (Wag the Dog), publisher of The Media and Strategic Marketing magazines, and online sites marketingweb.co.za and themediaonline.co.za.
She was the first woman vice-president of the Institute of Marketing Management and serves on the advisory board of the Gay and Lesbian archives, the National Film and Video Foundation Council and the Marketing Excellence Council. She is a judge of numerous journalism, media and marketing awards.
Gwen Gill
Journalist
Sunday Times
Tel: +27 11 280 3000
www.sundaytimes.co.za
A Sunday Times icon, Gwen Gill has been a social columnist at the paper for more than three decades. Her witty and sometimes scathing articles in The Social Scene are widely read across the country. She was also the paper’s first TV critic when television was introduced in South Africa in the 1970s.
Gill is well-known for her tongue-in-cheek, entertaining and scathing commentary on the parties, the fashionable and fashion faux pas, the food and the goings-on in the lives of the country’s rich and famous as well as today’s political hot shots.
Some say she’s done more than most to introduce the old and new elites to each other in South Africa. She was voted one of The Media magazine’s top 10 women journalists in 2004.
Ferial Haffajee
Editor-in-Chief
City Press
Tel: +27 11 713 9001
www.news24.com
In July 2009 Ferial Haffajee took on the editorship of the City Press, ending a five-year stint at the Mail & Guardian that began with her appointment as the M&G‘s fifth editor in 2004. Haffajee was the first woman to occupy the position.
Haffajee is also a council member of the South African National Editors’ Forum, is chairperson of its diversity committee and a general rabble-rouser. She cut her teeth at the M&G as a trainee reporter and worked as the newspaper’s media editor, economics writer and associate editor.
A member of the Africa Leadership Initiative, she won the 2004 Shoprite Checkers Woman of the Year award (media and communication). Haffajee was The Media magazine’s Media Woman for 2006. She is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum and sits on the boards of IPS Africa, the World Editors’ Forum and the International Women’s Media Foundation.
She also developed and edited the Little Black Book, South Africa’s comprehensive book of black leaders and was the founding editor of the M&G Book of South African Women.
Bronwyn Keene-Young
COO
e.tv
Tel: +27 11 537 9300
www.etv.co.za
As chief operating offi cer of e.tv, Bronwyn Keene-Young is responsible for all strategic and operational functions of the channel other than sales and finance.
As former head of the monitoring and complaints department at the old Independent Broadcasting Authority in the late 1990s, she joined e.tv as regulatory advisor and worked in various advisory and management capacities before being appointed to head the channel.
A drama graduate of the University of the Witwatersrand, Keene-Young co-founded the Media Monitoring Project, which was set up in 1993 to ensure fairness in media coverage. She holds an MA from Wits University and an LLB (cum laude) from Unisa.
Ruda Landman
Director
Media24
Tel: +27 11 713 9000
www.media24.co.za
Ruda Landman was the famous face of Carte Blanche on M-Net on Sundays and held that position authoritatively for 19 years, until June 2007.
Today she has gone freelance. Landman grew up in the Northern Cape and read languages at the University of Stellenbosch. She started her career as a journalist at Die Burger, later moving to SABC as a radio and television reporter.
After some years with Sarie magazine, she became co-anchor of Carte Blanche in August 1988. In 2003 Landman published a book on her experiences as a television journalist, titled Off Camera. She has been a director of Media24 since 2005.
Moipone Malefane
Senior Political Journalist
Sunday Times
Tel: +27 11 280 3000
www.sundaytimes.co.za
Moipone Malefane is a university graduate in journalism studies. She started her career doing in-service training at the South African Press Association. She has since spent her days crafting and honing her skills as a seasoned political journalist.
While in training, Moipone was expected to cover a range of areas and issues and realised the value of reporting on general news. After four years of gaining the necessary experience she discovered her area of interest and joined The Star as a political reporter responsible for covering the Gauteng government.
In 2005 she went on to join the Sunday Times politics team. Moipone has made her mark as a journalist and in 2007 was honoured with the Mondi Shanduka Award in the analysis and commentary category.
Lizeka Mda
Deputy Editor
City Press
Tel: +27 11 713 9001
www.citypress.co.za
Lizeka Mda was appointed deputy editor of City Press, one of the country’s fastest-growing newspapers, in 2007. She was previously managing editor of the paper.
Mda is an experienced print journalist who has moved steadily through the industry’s ranks. Her immediate prior appointment was as editor of Sawubona, the SAA glossy.
Before that, she worked at the Sunday Times and was editor of the Verve section at The Star. Mda is a Harvard Nieman fellow.
Zingisa Mkhuma
Editor
Pretoria News
Tel: +27 12 300 2000
www.pretorianews.co.za
Zingisa Mkhuma, the first black woman editor in the history of the Pretoria News, has spent her entire professional life with Independent Newspapers, from the time she graduated from the Argus School of Journalism as a cadet reporter more than 20 years ago.
She is an award-winning journalist; in 2004 she was judged the best columnist in the country in the Vodacom Journalist of the Year awards, and in 2000 she was runner-up in the CNN Africa Journalist of the Year competition.
Before being named editor of the Pretoria News, she was executive editor of The Star in Johannesburg.
Phylicia Oppelt
Editor
Business Times
Tel: +27 11 280 3000
www.thetimes.co.za
Phylicia Oppelt has been the editor of Business Times since December last year. Before that she was editor of the Daily Dispatch in East London, — the first woman to hold the position — from January 2005.
She has gained national respect for her social and political commentary about the country and while at the head of the Daily Dispatch, the newspaper last year broke the story of the ‘state of emergency” conditions at the Mount Frere Hospital, a serious indictment of the department of health.
Under her leadership, the Daily Dispatch began to publish hard-hitting, investigative journalism and she initiated a number of management changes on the paper and has appointed several women to leadership positions. Oppelt had a devout following at the Sunday Times between 2000 and 2004, where she wrote a column that took a penetrating and independent view of politics in the country.
Nontyatyambo Petros
Deputy Editor
Business Report
Tel: +27 11 633 2348
www.busrep.co.za
Nontyatyambo Petros is the deputy editor of Business Report. Prior to this she spent two years at Financial Mail, first as special projects editor and later as a commissioning editor. She started her media career as a web journalist, working as assistant editor for Metropolis, a now-defunct subsidiary of Primedia, before joining Business Day as online news editor.
She later became a financial writer and labour correspondent for Business Day. In 2003 she left the newspaper to join Grocott’s Mail, a community newspaper based in Grahamstown, where she was editor.
Petros has attended a United Nations fellowship for journalists and broadcasters and presented papers at various national and international conferences. She graduated from Rhodes University in 1996, with a joint honours degree in journalism and media studies and industrial sociology. Last year she studied towards a post-graduate diploma in business administration at the Gordon Institute of Business Science.
Debora Patta
Editor-in-Chief
e.tv
Tel: +27 11 537 9300
www.etv.co.za
Debora Patta is editor-in-chief for both e.tv and e.24, the cable news channel which launched its 24-hour news station in June 2008. Some can’t stand her strident in-your-face style while others, especially those in the independent and critical world of journalism, admire her fearless and spirited interviewing technique. Her investigate programme Third Degree is excellent and has no holy cows.
Patta has also published two books: one on Nelson Mandela’s bodyguard and another on Michaela, the baby kidnapped at birth. She started her career as a political activist in Cape Town’s squatter camps in the turbulent 1980s, moved on to become a freelance reporter and then spent about eight years working at Radio 702.
Besides being the winner of many awards, Patta is also known as Nelson Mandela’s favourite journalist.
Jane Raphaely
Publisher
Associated Magazines
Tel: +27 21 464 6216
www.assocmags.co.za
Jane Raphaely is easily the country’s most successful magazine publisher. She founded Fairlady in 1967, which inspired her to establish her own publishing company, Associated Magazines. In 1984 Raphaely, with business partner Volker Kuhnel, launched Cosmopolitan as the first title of Associated Magazines.
Today Cosmopolitanis the flagship of the largest privately owned publishing house in South Africa. After the success of Cosmopolitan came Femina, followed by House & Leisure, Baby & Me, Brides & Homes and Marie Claire. In 2001 Associated Magazines was the only company considered by Oprah Winfrey to launch O, The Oprah Magazine outside the US. Over the years Raphaely has been named Businesswoman of the Year, Media Innovator of the Year and The Star‘s Woman of our Time.
Raphaely is also passionate about various causes. She initiated the founding of the first shelter for battered women in Langa, the controversial Charlize Theron ‘Real Men Don’t Rape” campaign and the Men’s March in Cape Town.
Iman Rappetti
Anchor and reporter
e.24
www.etv.co.za
Iman Rappetti, an anchor and reporter at e.24, is known best for her historic on-air confrontation with former president Thabo Mbeki.
The doorstop moment took place on October 2 2007 when Rapetti questioned Mbeki about reports of a warrant of arrest that had allegedly been issued for National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi, which led to the suspension of National Prosecution Authority boss Vusi Pikoli. Mbeki refused to answer. For Rapetti this is what her job is all about.
She believes that as a journalist, she does not just hold the mirror that reflects on society, but rather gives it a voice. Rapetti is a journalism graduate from Durban and has also worked in television news in Iran, for the SABC, Business Day and Talk Radio 702.
Rehana Rossouw
Executive Editor
The Weekender
Tel: +27 11 280 3000
www.bdfm.co.za
A veteran in print journalism, The Weekender‘s executive editor, Rehana Rossouw, was previously managing editor of Business Day newspaper and for some years has written a weekly column on social issues for The Weekender.
Rossouw has also been deputy editor of the Mail & Guardian, an assistant editor at Business Day and deputy editor of South newspaper, one of the brave alternative titles of the 1980s, alongside The Weekly Mail and Vrye Weekblad.
She cut her activist teeth on the Cape Flats, reporting at the height of the struggle against apartheid, and was detained while pregnant with her son Jihad. She is highly respected in the media fraternity for, among other skills, her mentoring and coaching style.
Pearl Sebolao
Deputy Editor
Business Day
Tel: +27 11 280 5543
www.businessday.co.za
Pearl Sebolao is deputy editor at Business Day. Sebolao joined Business Day in 1996 as a reporter.
In 1999 she was Gauteng correspondent, responsible for covering party-political issues and developments, the provincial government and legislature, as well as the activities of the various government departments in the province.
She was promoted to news editor at the paper in 2001, before moving into the managing editor’s role in 2004, where she was part of Business Day‘s management team in budget planning, expenditure and human resource management, apart from her role as news editor.
Sebolao graduated from Immaculata High School in 1991, before gaining her BA in journalism and media studies, and industrial sociology in 2005 at Rhodes University.
Edwina van der Burg
Managing Editor
Mail & Guardian
Tel: +27 11 250 7300
www.mg.co.za
Edwina van der Burg has been the managing editor of the Mail & Guardian since April 2007. She cut her teeth as an intern at South newspaper in Cape Town in the early-1990s under the mentorship of Rehana Rossouw, eventually taking up fulltime posts as the alternative weekly’s crime, labour and education reporter before the newspaper closed in the mid-1990s.
In 1995 Van der Burg relocated to Johannesburg to join the South African Press Association as a reporter. Two years later she was appointed deputy chief sub-editor, one of the first women to occupy the position.
In 1999 she left to join the M&G as a senior sub-editor. In her 10-year tenure at the M&G, Van der Burg has held various positions, including that of international editor, deputy chief sub-editor, deputy news editor and deputy managing editor.
Terry Volkwyn
CEO
Prime Media Broadcasting
Tel: +27 11 506 3200
www.primemedia.co.za
As CEO of Prime Media Broadcasting, Terry Volkwyn has the job of improving operational efficiency and effectiveness at the company’s four radio stations. In the early 1990s Volkwyn was 702’s sales manager, a position she excelled at before being appointed Primedia Broadcasting’s group sales director.
In 1999 she became MD of 94.7 Highveld Stereo and in August 2002 was appointed CEO of Primedia Broadcasting, the company that manages Talk Radio 702, 94.7 Highveld Stereo in Gauteng and 567 CapeTalk and 94.5 KFM in the Western Cape.
In her current position, Volkwyn has put in place the business practices that will go a long way to improving the operational effectiveness of the company’s four radio stations. Volkwyn has chaired the radio committee of the National Association of Broadcasters since 2002.