About the Book
It tells, amongst many others, of: the early fight against monopolies in the Cape wine industry; the man who broke the Peace of Vereeniging before the British cabinet knew about it; the escapades of ‘Mr Drum’; the nun who exposed Rhodesia’s protected villages; how the opening of parliament in eSwatini became an investigative expose; the journalist who dressed as a priest to witness the Matabeleland massacre; and the use of satellites to get round Botswana censorship.
This book breaks new ground in tracing the history back to 1706, including for the first time largely ignored work such as John Dube’s coverage of the 1906 Bambatha Rebellion and Ricardo de Mello’s fax newspaper in Angola. It highlights the long record of accountability journalism in countries such as Botswana, Tanzania and Lesotho. It includes an introduction by Anton Harber, editor and professor of journalism, with each of the forty-seven case studies being written and contextualised by an expert in the area.
About the Author
Anton Harber holds the Caxton Chair of Journalism at the University of the Witwatersrand. He was founder-editor of The Weekly Mail (now the Mail & Guardian), editor-in-chief of South Africa’s leading television news channel, eNCA, and chief executive of Kagiso Broadcasting. He is a board member of the Global Investigative Journalism Network and former chair of the SA Conference of Editors and the National Association of Broadcasters. Harber wrote Diepsloot (2011), The Gorilla in the Room (2013) and co-edited the first two editions of The A-Z of South African Politics, What is Left Unsaid: Reporting the South African HIV Epidemic, and Troublemakers: The Best of SA’s Investigative Journalism.
