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
CNBC Africa
Tel: +27 11 384 0300
www.cnbcafrica.com
Well-known for her poise and intelligent questions on SABC3’s Interface, up until last year, Nikiwe Bikitsha is now current affairs anchor at CNBC Africa. 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 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.
Thundy Booi
Media Specialist
Parliament’s Media Management Unit
Tel: +27 21 403 3403
www.parliament.gov.za
Media specialist for Parliament, Thundy Booi grew up in exile and started working in the media within the ANC’s department of information and publicity. She also did a brief stint for SABC/Business Day before joining the Billiton Group. Booi then served on a regional programme in communications for the international donor organisation, Heinrich Boell Stiftung.
She completed training on media legislation sponsored by the Southern African Development Community — Parliamentary Forum. The SADC Parliamentary Forum (SADC — PF) is the first regional grouping of parliaments in Africa. Booi was seconded as a media specialist to the 118th Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Assembly and dealt with a media contingency from 140 countries.
She was also seconded as a media specialist to the Pan African Parliament. In addition, she successfully coordinated the 20th anniversary of the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, an international project with a support of various international stakeholders such as the Cubans, Russians, Angolans and SADC countries.
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 television and video, print, radio and the internet. Cachalia hails from a family with strong political struggle credentials.
Her grandfather, Ahmed Cachalia, was a contemporary of Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa and both her parents Amina and Yusuf Cachalia were leading activist stalwarts in the 1940s and 1950s. 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.
Desiree Chauke
Co-Anchor 180 Degrees SABC International
SABC
Tel: +27 11 714 5999
www.sabc.co.za
Co-anchor for SABC’s 180 Degrees International, Desiree Chauke, not long ago produced news which went out to the African continent. Now 180 Degrees goes out to the rest of the world. The media bug bit in 1992 when Chauke, who hails from Soweto, first joined the SABC.
Since then she has been involved in media as a strategist, prime-time anchor, news reader, voice artist, script writer, producer, DJ and radio talk show host. Her formal training is in public relations. From 1996 to 1999 she ran her own business processes outsourcing company called Corporate Link Communications. She joined SABC Africa in 2001. The continental market had such an allure that soon she was with the channel full-time. She is one of the co-anchors on SABC Africa’s flagship morning show 180 Degrees and is studying for her degree in marketing.
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 3Â 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
After reading for a master’s degree in international relations at Cambridge, Robyn Curnow returned home to work as a regional correspondent for CNN. Earlier this year, she presented CNN’s special coverage of the Zimbabwean election. Curnow worked first 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
Founding editor of Destiny
Tel: +27 11 300 6767
www.ndalomedia.co.za
Khanyi Dhlomo is the driving force behind Ndalo Media and Destiny magazine in her dual role as founding editor of the publication and managing director of Ndalo Media. Destiny is South Africa’s leading business and lifestyle magazine for women.
In addition to winning awards as a television news and lifestyle anchor, she was editor of True Love magazine for eight years where she not only doubled the publication’s readership and circulation, but also received accolades including the AdVantage Magazine Editor of the Year award in 2001. True Love was also voted Consumer Magazine of the Year by AdVantage in 2001. In 2003 she was named one of the most influential women in South African media by The Media magazine. Most recently, Khanyi has been nominated for the 2008 Vodacom Women in The Media awards. Since 2003 Khanyi has been abroad, first in Paris where she headed South African Tourism in France and then in the US where she completed an MBA at Harvard Business School. She is now based in South Africa, having successfully launched Destiny in October 2007.
Lisel Erasmus-Kritzinger
Author, Publisher and Communications Lecturer
Email: [email protected]
www.inspirationalwomenatwork.com
Author, publisher and communications lecturer, Lisel Erasmus-Kritzinger is famous for publishing Inspirational Women at Work, about the life stories of 52 South African women who make a difference. She launched the National 1001 Women Modern Mentoring Project, a mentoring plan to educate and link community-based leaders with mentors. She is the author of a series of business communication publications used by tertiary institutions across the country.
Erasmus-Kritzinger lectures on project communications at the University of Johannesburg and consults to leading businesses about effective and strategic communication. A regular media commentator, Erasmus-Kritzinger is an editorial adviser for Leadership magazine. She holds an MA in applied linguistics and is working towards a PhD in the same discipline. Erasmus-Kritzinger is proud to be associated with the University of Stellenbosch and Fort Hare through the Rachel’s Angels & Inkwenkweni Projects, which aim to empower learners to complete university degrees. She also advises the department of education on examinations set for English language communication.
Paula Fray
Regional Director: Inter Press Service (IPS) Africa
www.ipsnews.net/africa
Chairperson frayintermedia
Tel: +27 11 341 0767
www.frayintermedia.com
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. IPS Africa provides news on development and issues for media across the continent and beyond. It also focuses on capacity building for reporters and creating partnerships with civil society.
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 June 2008 Fray was voted onto 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 television production company Sasani Ltd as CEO, a position she held for three years.
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/gwen/
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 on who wore what at what event, who was there and on whose arm are widely read across the country. She was also the paper’s first TV critic when television was introduced in South Africa in the 70s.
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.
Jacquie Golding
Executive Chairperson
Creda Communications
Tel: +27 21 505 6100
www.creda.co.za
At the age of 35, Jacquie Golding is the youngest ever executive chairperson of the board at Creda Communications. That’s in addition to running a graphic design consultancy. Golding started her career with the then Weekly Mail in 1991, and after a Thomson Foundation journalism course in Cardiff, Wales, went on to chalk up more than a decade of experience on South Africa’s newspapers, including Business Day and the Argus, as reporter, media editor and columnist. She also worked as a researcher for M&G Television. She lived in London for several years, securing a diploma in television production from the London Academy of Film. She is also a graduate of the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business. She holds other executive and non-executive posts and is active in the family-run philanthropic Wheatfield Estate Foundation trust. “I am the youngest by at least a decade among my fellow directors at Creda, which is a wonderful opportunity in an often staid business world,” she notes. “Fresh ideas and breaking the mould often come from those who have not warmed several directors’ seats for years on end.”
Helen Graham
Station Manager
5FM
Tel: +27 11 714 2905
www.5fm.co.za
Helen Graham started out as station manager at 5FM in 2006. After she joined, the station launched its new breakfast and drive-time shows to great success with Gareth Cliff and DJ Fresh respectively. 5FM has a “past seven day” audience of more than 1,5-million, as recorded in June 2008.
Before joining 5FM, Graham was station manager of Good Hope FM in Cape Town, where in her two-year tenure she increased the station’s audience by more than 100 000 new listeners against a broader backdrop of stable and declining radio audiences. Prior to Good Hope FM, Graham was marketing manager at 5FM.
She started as Mark Gillman’s production manager and moved on to become 5FM’s events coordinator, which lead to her position as marketing manager before becoming station manager. Graham obtained a BCom from the University of the Witwatersrand.
Pheladi Gwangwa
Station Manager
Talk Radio 702
Tel: +27 11 506 3702
www.702.co.za
Pheladi Gwangwa’s career has combined broadcasting and the law. The law came first: she earned a BProc at the University of the North — now the University of Limpopo — and an LLB and LLM at the University of the Witwatersrand, and practised both at the commercial firm of Blakes Inc and for the Department of Justice before an appointment to the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), the predecessor to the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa.
At the IBA, she served as head for licensing in the broadcasting unit, leading the team responsible for aspects regarding the processing of broadcast licence applications. She moved on to a post as regulatory planning manager for Cell C, then, in 2002, to Primedia, as regulatory affairs manager, responsible for anticipating policy and legislative initiatives. In 2005 she was named station manager. Gwangwa is a finalist in the Vodacom Women in the Media competition.
Ferial Haffajee
Editor-in-Chief
Mail & Guardian
Tel: +27 11 250 7300
www.mg.co.za
Ferial Haffajee took on the editorship of the Mail & Guardian in February 2004. She is the newspaper’s fifth editor and the first woman in the job. “In a short space of time Ferial has become a role model and an inspiration to a whole generation of South Africans. She is a perfect ambassador for the M&G brand and all that it represents.
I am amazed by how she has grown as a person and manager,” says Trevor Ncube, CEO of the M&G Media Ltd. 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, started by Isaac Shongwe of Barlow Logistics, 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.
Katy Katopodis
News editor 702 and 94.7 Highveld Stereo
Tel: +27 11 506 3702
www.702.co.za
Johannesburg news editor of 702 and 94.7 Highveld Stereo, Katy Katopodis made headlines herself this year by challenging the Forum for Black Journalists (FBJ) for barring her and her colleagues from a luncheon meeting of the organisation with ANC president Jacob Zuma earlier this year.
The South African Human Rights Commission found in favour of Katopodis and her 702 colleagues, commenting that while an organisation such as the FBJ had a right to exist, white journalists could not be and should not be excluded. She has been with Primedia since 1996 and began work at Talk Radio 702 in 1997. She was appointed to her current position in 2005.
Bronwyn Keene-Young
COO
e.tv
Tel: +27 11 537 9300
www.etv.co.za
As chief operating officer 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.
Wendy Knowler
Consumer Editor
Independent Newspapers & Presenter: Consumer Watch
East Coast Radio
Tel: +27 31 208 7436
Email: [email protected]
Wendy Knowler has 23 years’ experience as a journalist, mostly with the Independent Newspapers group, and is the group’s consumer editor. In her twice weekly consumer column, Consumer Watch, published in The Star, Pretoria News, Cape Times and Daily News, she tackles issues ranging from misleading advertising to problematic cars, dodgy debt collectors and the effects of the aggressive marketing of junk food to children.
Since January 2004 she has been investigating and presenting a weekly consumer show, Consumerwatch, for East Coast Radio, the dominant radio station in KwaZulu-Natal, with just less than two million listeners. Knowler also writes a consumer column, Consumerbeat, for eThekwini municipality’s monthly Metrobeat magazine. She has won several journalism awards, including a national Vodacom Journalist of the Year award in the print feature category in 2003, for her in-depth report on South Africa’s domestic workers. In 2005 she won the Consumer Journalist category of the Department of Trade and Industry’s Consumer Champion awards and was joint winner of the same award in 2008.
Ruda Landman
Freelance journalist
Email: [email protected]
Ruda Landman was the famous face of Carte Blanche on M-Net on Sundays and held that position authoritatively for 19 years, until June last year. 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 is a director of Media24.
Mendo Molefe
Director: Human Resources
M&G Media Ltd
Tel: +27 11 250 7300
www.mg.co.za
Mendo Molefe is the director: human capital for M&G Media Ltd, the Mail & Guardian‘s parent company, a position she has held since November 2006. With a background in counselling and community development gained from working for various NGOs, Molefe began her career in human resources at the South African Post Office as a generalists HR practitioner.
She furthered her experience in the field with a stint at Transnet as an assistant training manager at Metrorail and HR manager for Propnet, before joining Debis IT Services. In the years to follow she moved to the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry as chief director HR, before returning to Transnet as an HR executive for Datavia. When Datavia merged with Arivia.kom, Molefe was appointed Arivia.kom’s HR executive. A short stint as group HR executive at the SA Bureau of Standards followed and she was consulting for the Resolve Group when she joined M&G Media. Molefe holds a BA Social Science degree from the University of the North, an honours degree in Psychology from RAU and a specialised education diploma from Wits University.
Pearl Luthuli-Mashabela
Chief Executive of Public Commercial Services
SABC
Tel: +27 11 714 4800
www.sabc.co.za
Pearl Luthuli-Mashabela is the chief executive of public commercial services at the SABC. In office since October 2005, she directs the corporation’s commercial radio services as well as SABC3. A print industry veteran, Luthuli-Mashabela has run both KLP Portfolio Communications and Nothemba Publishing (formerly Penta Publications) and is also the publisher of Enterprising Women, a publication that focuses on the empowerment of women in both the public and private sectors.
She has served on several boards including Landelahni Recruitment Group, Total SA, Capital Oil, Moribo Leisure and Akwaaba Women’s Investments. Luthuli-Mashabela is responsible for revenue generation at the SABC; the broadcaster relies on advertising revenue for 85% of its running costs.
Nkepile Mabuse
African correspondent
CNN
Tel: +27 11 726 4251
www.cnn.com
Nkepile Mabuse joined CNN as an Africa correspondent from e.tv where she was most recently executive producer of Third Degree, the investigative documentary programme. At CNN, she has quickly won her stripes and expanded her beat beyond South Africa’s borders. At e.tv, she covered a wide range of domestic and international stories and worked as a researcher, reporter and producer. She is a previous category winner of the CNN Multichoice African Journalist of the Year and received a merit award in the Vodacom Journalist of the Year award for bright young stars.
Tumi Makgabo
Conference Speakers International
Tel: +27 11 465 4447
[email protected]
Renowned former television newsreader Tumi Makgabo, who has been in broadcasting for more than a decade both in South Africa and for the global news network CNN International, is now a conference speaker and MC at major functions with Conference Speakers International.
Prior to this, she was communications manager and spokesperson for the 2010 Fifa World Cup Organising Committee, up until early 2008. Makgabo also produces and hosts a talk show, OETalk with Tumi Makgabo, for M-Net. As an anchor for several years at CNN International’s headquarters in Atlanta, US, Makgabo co-produced and hosted Inside Africa.
Makgabo has served on a number of advisory panels for the European Commission as well as the African Union. She also serves on the board of the African Women’s Development Fund. In 2006 Makgabo started a TV production company, which produces OETalk with Tumi Makgabo. In recognition of her work in broadcasting, Makgabo has received a number of awards including the Eagle Award, a Rapport City Press Prestige Award, a DuPont Award, and the African Peoples’ Intercontinental Broadcaster of the Year Award.
Tsepiso Makwetla
SAfm breakfast show host
Tel: +27 11 714 4442
www.safm.co.za
Tsepiso Makwetla is the face of SABC’s prime time news broadcasts. A journalist, she started her broadcasting career in 1995 at Cani FM. She spent the next five years at Primedia before moving to the SABC in 2001.
She has been at the public broadcaster ever since and worked in the news department as a writer on the English news desk, bulletin writer and presenter at SAfm. In 2003 she moved to SABC Africa to co-host its flagship current affairs show 60 Minutes Live. In 2006 she returned to SAfm to co-host the drive-time current affairs show, PM Live, with Jeremy Maggs. They both later moved to the breakfast show AM Live. Makwetla now hosts the SAfm breakfast show on her own, while also presenting SABC’s Sunday current affairs programme Interface. She is also back at the news desk with the News at Seven.
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.
Michelle Matthews
Publishing Consultant
Tel: +27 82 921 1101
Email: [email protected]
Publishing consultant and freelance writer Michelle Matthews began her professional life in magazines and the press, working as a journalist and sub-editor for the Mail & Guardian, CityLife and Big Media. Matthews’ byline has appeared in the country’s major glossies: Shape, FHM and Men’s Health.
Before her move into book publishing, she was managing editor of SL magazine, then moved on to a post as publishing manager of Struik’s new women’s imprint, Oshun Books, which has on its list top novelists, poets and writers of non-fiction. In 2006 Matthews was nominated for the British Council’s award for International Young Publisher of the Year. The experience took her on a fact-finding tour to Europe.
Lizeka Mda
Deputy Editor
City Press
Tel: +27 11 713 9001
www.citypress.co.za
Lizeka Mda was appointed deputy editor of the City Press, one of the country’s fastest-growing newspapers, last year. 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.
Gugu Msibi
Chairperson of the MDDA
Tel: +27 11 726 3336
www.mdda.org.za
Gugu Msibi has been chairperson of the Media Development and Diversity Agency since the beginning of 2008. The MDDA was set up by an Act of Parliament (Act 14 of 2002) to enable “historically disadvantaged communities and persons not adequately served by the media” to gain access to the media. A BA journalism and economics graduate with an MBA from Bond University, Australia, in 2000 Msibi co-founded Spin Media, a black-owned communications consultancy.
As executive director of Spin, she is responsible for media training, communications development and public affairs strategies. Msibi is a former marketing and communications executive at the State Information Technology. She was also a political journalist at the SABC, worked as a senior producer for SAfm and was head of broadcast training at the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism. She is a strategy and media adviser to Tokyo Sexwale, the SABC, the Land Bank, Gauteng Shared Services, Parliament, Transnet and the Department of Home Affairs. She is also a non-executive director of Powertel, a telecommunications company.
Phumelele Ntombela-Nzimande
Chief People Officer at the SABC
Tel: +27 11 714 2259
www.sabc.co.za
Phumlele Ntombela-Nzimande is chief people officer for the People Cluster at the SABC. This means that she oversees human resources and corporate affairs at the public broadcaster. Prior to this she was group executive of public and regulatory affairs at the SABC, a position she assumed in October 2005 and worked in up until June 2007.
Here she ensured regulatory and policy compliance at the SABC and strategically positioned the broadcaster to local and international stakeholders. Before her senior role at the SABC, she was the deputy director general of strategy, intergovernmental and international relations at the Department of Communications.
Phylicia Oppelt
Editor
Daily Dispatch
Tel: +27 43 702 2000
www.dispatch.co.za
Phylicia Oppelt, editor of the Daily Dispatch in East London, is the newspaper’s first woman editor. She was appointed in January 2005. Her appointment, at 35, makes her the only woman editor of a daily newspaper in South Africa, and one of only three serving woman newspaper editors in the country. She has gained national respect for her social and political commentary about the country and her 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.
She 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. Under her leadership, the Daily Dispatch now publishes hard-hitting, investigative journalism. She has also initiated a number of management changes on the paper and has appointed several women to leadership positions.
Debora Patta
Editor-in-Chief
E-News Live, e.tv
Tel: +27 11 537 9300
www.etv.co.za
The most hard-hitting woman face of investigative journalism in television today is the inimitable Debora Patta. She 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 who captured the nation’s hearts. 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 close on eight years working at Radio 702. Besides being the winner of many awards (1992 South African Checkers Journalist of the Year Award, 2004 Vodacom Gauteng Regional Winner, 2004 MTN Outstanding Women in Media), Patta is also known as Nelson Mandela’s favourite journalist.
Nontyatyambo Petros
Executive Editor
Business Report
Tel: +27 11 633 2348
www.busrep.co.za
Nontyatyambo Petros is the executive editor of Business Report, a position she took up in July last year. 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 then 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. This year she is studying towards a post-graduate diploma in business administration at the Gordon Institute of Business Science.
Uveka Rangappa
Journalist/Newsreader
e.tv
Tel: +27 11 537 9300
www.etv.co.za
Uveka Rangappa joined e.tv as newsreader in May this year. Before that she was an afternoon-drive news anchor on Alex Jay’s show on 94.7 Highveld Stereo. She started her career at the SABC in 1996 and worked at the broadcaster for almost five years before moving on to anchor the morning news programme Newsbreak on Lotus FM until 2001.
In May 2001 Rangappa joined the East Coast Radio team in Durban. She served as morning anchor on Daryll Illbury’s breakfast show until March 2002. She also hosted a current affairs programme, Newswatch in Focus. After a year at East Coast Radio she joined Talk Radio 702 as the drive-time news anchor on The David O’Sullivan Show.
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 Cosmopolitan is 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 is an anchor and reporter at e.24. She took journalistic honours this year when she was bundled from a Union Buildings press conference after asking a particularly cheeky question of President Thabo Mbeki. Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad ordered her out after she asked the president whether he had seen warrants of arrest issued for top cop Jackie Selebi. “I became a journalist because I thought that was the best way to actually make a difference in this world — I am not a ‘watch from the sidelines’ kind of person.” Rapetti has worked at the SABC, on Iranian television and for 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.
Desiree Terblanche
Editor-in-Chief/Shareholder
Zululand Media
Tel: +27 35 901 9400
www.feveronline.co.za
There aren’t many women newspaper owners in South Africa, so Desiree Terblanche is a trailblazer. She is editor-in-chief of Zululand Fever, the community newspaper of Richards Bay and its surrounding region. And she holds an equity stake in her successful new title together with Naspers and the Witness Group. A journalist at heart, she has been published widely and in 2004 was named a new literary voice when she won the Fairlady/CNA new writer competition.
Her passions include training young women in various aspects of her business. Terblanche started her journalism training at a community newspaper in 1992 and has worked as sub-editor and editor on various local publications. She believes that making the world a better place is not naive; it just takes a hell of a lot of work, sassy columns and tons of newsprint.
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 and oversees the day-to-day running of the editorial department, as well as the newspaper’s sister publications and special projects. She cut her teeth as an intern at South newspaper in Cape Town in the early1990s 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 nine-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 managing director 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.
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