Guerrillas and Combative Mothers: Women and the Armed Struggle in South Africa

Siphokazi Magadla's Guerrillas and Combative Mothers rests on 40 life histories of women who joined armed struggles of many kinds to fight apartheid. The book is a result of her doctorate which in turn rests on work she did while being a research consultant at the Institute for Security Studies. In 2010, on the tenth anniversary of the United Nations' (UN's) adoption of Resolution 1325, Magadla and Chery Hendricks produced the documentary Women and Security Sector Transformation in South Africa (2010). Magadla interviewed Major General Ntsiki Memela-Motumi, then chief director of transformation management in the South African National Defence Force (SANDF); Thandi Modise, a previous chair of the Portfolio Committee on Defence in the National Assembly and; Mala Singh, former deputy national commissioner of the South African Police Service (SAPS). Memela-Motumi and Modise are both former combatants in Umkhonto weSizwe (MK). They provided rich accounts of how their experiences as women in MK informed their later roles in transforming the SANDF. However, the study also has a prior genesis in Magadla's own experience of being the daughter of a soldier in the Transkei Defence Force. He ended his military career at 40 after that force was integrated into the SANDF. Her mother, a psychiatric nurse, also made her aware of the unstable mental conditions of many soldiers who were demobilised from the various armed forces in the period around 1994. This personal knowledge plus the experience of working with the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) gives the impetus for an important study. It is a study arising out of the complicated and turbulent moment in time when seven armies were integrated. These seven armies include the South African Defence Force (SADF), MK, the Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA) and the four 'homeland' armies. This was a period in which those who had chosen to fight apartheid were faced with the question of whether they were career soldiers or not; and whether a return to civilian life was possible now that there was no longer a war

Rewrite, revise, refine, reflect, rethink: the long and short of teaching journalism at Rhodes

Vice-Chancellor’s 2011 Senior Distinguished Teaching Award lecture, 10 October 201

Africa: Media

Those are our twin concerns as we move into this new moment in human history which is being called the "Information Society" or the "Information Age"

Digital disruption: some instagrams

I'm going to shamelessly pinch someone else's language to think about the changes and challenges of this media moment we are living through and take the theme for the Mennel Media Exchange (MMX14), organised by Laurie Bley of Duke University and Patrick Conroy of eNCA and held in Johannesburg in July. “ Digital disruption" doesn't fallen into the neat pessimism or optimism so emblematic of our times but does say forcefully that we are all on uncertain ground and need to reconfigure our ways of doing and being in media making, media managing and in education

Intermediating Africa:

In July, Vanity Fair, based in New York, did a unique special edition. Editor Graydon Carter explained how it came about: "Earlier this year, Mark Dowley, a marketing polymath at the Endeavour talent agency who has been involved with Bono's (Red) campaign from the start, called to inquire if I would be interested in having him guest edit an issue of the magazine. Interested? I'll say!"

Why we need Di Versity the Superjourno:

Training and education is a serious subject, and there are thousands (millions) of words to be said about it. But when you're putting a magazine together you need visuals too, and how do you illustrate this subject?

The both-and edition:

I was driving down the N2 from Cape Town towards the airport recently and scanning the turn-offs for Vanguard Drive, when suddenly I noticed among the shacks that line the road some really interesting buildings. These were not the pale pink matchboxes that periodically spring up in rows alongside the derelict housing that millions of South Africans call home. They were multi-levelled, had large windows and looked like an architect might have had something to do with them. I was heartened at the sight of housing – at last – with humanity in mind. But as I reread the 2010 pieces in this edition, I’m reminded by Jane Duncan in particular (“Whose World Cup?” page 23) that prettifying the ghastly spaces in our world cup cities that will be visible to those international tourists is high on the agenda for our government. But then, I reason, at least someone will benefit from living along the noisy and congested airport route!

The future is already here...:

Two of the School of Journalism and Media Studies' most important projects get into high gear in July and August: the Highway Africa conference and the Rhodes Journalism Review. And for a great many years now the two have had an important association as well as being important vehicles for our engagement with the continent of Africa and its journalists, editors, media owners, policy-makers, researchers, theorists, educators and innovators

Thinking about fear and freedom:

Some convictions have chrystalised for me in the process of putting together this new edition of Rhodes Journalism Review