Review: Vivien Horler
The SABC8, by Foeta Krige (Penguin Books)
I’ve never met Foeta Krige, but I’ve worked with people like him, and I have an idea about the way he operated.
He was an old-school reporter and editor. You covered the news without fear or favour, assembled the facts, spoke to analysts and gave your subject the right of reply.
I cannot imagine what it’s like to be called to a meeting – as Krige was in 2014 – and told it had been decided the SABC would give no further coverage to the EFF. When Krige protested to Jimi Matthews, head of TV news, that this sort of order was reminiscent of the years of apartheid censorship, Matthews exploded: “Don’t you talk to me about apartheid. You people, what did you do to change things?” Continue reading
Let’s start with the design of this hardback, which does not resemble a cookbook at all. Shocking pink cover, featuring a swathe of gold, a single brushstroke by artist and calligrapher Tom Kemp which, he points out, are not pictures or representing anything, but a small aside to remind readers about the “nature of nature… where ultimately the food in this book comes from”.
Paddy Upton worked with two of the best cricket teams in the world, South Africa and India. He was fitness trainer for the former and mental coach to the latter. Was it any wonder, then, that India won a World Cup and South Africa didn’t?
One late afternoon in 1974, when I was 22, I went with my boyfriend to visit his brother Rob in the boarding house where he lived behind St Paul’s Church in Rondebosch.