“What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.” – Nelson Mandela, May 2002
Out of the class of 1979 at Rhodes University came two women whose identities merged with the painful birth of the new South Africa: two journalism students whose journey was to take them into defiance, imprisonment and torture during the apartheid years.
One of the quietest girls in the class, Marion Sparg, joined Umkhonto we Sizwe, trained in exile in Angola and was eventually convicted of bombing three police stations. The Cape Times journalist Zubeida Jaffer was imprisoned, poisoned and tortured for her writing and her union activism, yet chose not to prosecute her torturer.
Guy Berger, also a student and later a lecturer at Rhodes University, was arrested and interrogated for possession of banned books. He spent seven months in custody, three of which he spent in solitary confinement. He was ultimately sentenced to four years in prison. This is a book that you should read to understand where journalism comes from and perhaps where it’s going .
