Africa’s super scribes win CNN awards

TOP JOURNALISTS: The CNN Multichoice Journalist Awards held at the weekend saluted writers, photographers and documentary filmmakers from across Africa.

TOP JOURNALISTS: The CNN Multichoice Journalist Awards held at the weekend saluted writers, photographers and documentary filmmakers from across Africa.

Published Oct 23, 2014

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THE 19th CNN Multichoice Journalist Awards at the weekend celebrated excellence in news reporting by African journalists from all over the continent.

Held in Tanzania’s Dar es Salaam, the awards sought to reward the newsmakers of the past year. Africa is a news source for many channels, including CNN and with Ebola, famine and civil wars always grabbing international headlines, it is refreshing to hear these stories told from an African perspective.

The 24 nominees from all over Africa were made up of writers, photographers and documentary makers. Snippets shown of their work meant a glimpse into the various brush strokes that paint the African social, economic and political portrait.

That said, apart from the obvious gloomy stories that always characterise African news, some of the stories highlighted on the night were feel-good pieces.

One such item was a dramatic piece submitted by Kenyan writer, Evelyn Watta, for her online media outlet, Sportnewsarena.com. The story is about Senegal’s mythical wrestling heritage which Watta witnessed in Senegal. While on assignment on another story in Senegal, Watta stumbled on the existence of the wrestling in the country. Her time was up, but the writer decided to stay on longer, rented a place and explored this often unspoken-about spectacle.

But the nature of the news business is such that the more sad or drastic the story is, the more papers it sells. So it was no surprise to see works from the likes of Mozambican reporter Bento Venançio, who investigated the financial scandal in his country’s State Treasury department or the South African pair from Carte Blanche, Joy Summers and Susan Comrie, who unearthed inexperienced companies that got an R800 million tender from Johannesburg’s City Power to install solar power heaters and geysers around the city. After finding out that most of these installed geysers were either faulty or badly installed the Carte Blanche team went after the perpetrators.

The two went on to win the GE Energy & Infrastructure Award, becoming the first of the two South African wins on the night.

The other who scooped an award was Sean Christie, a freelance writer for Landbouweekblad and Mail & Guardian who won the Coca-cola Economics & Business Award. The title of his winning story was Zimbabwe’s Forests Go Up in Smoke, a look at the complex land reform of Zimbabwe’s arable land.

Saturday Star’s photographer Paballo Thekiso had submitted beautiful images on the funeral of Nelson Mandela. He was nominated in the Mohamed Amin Photographic Award category.

The only competition he faced was Kenyan freelance photographer, Joseph Mathenge of The Saturday Nation. Mathenge came to international fame by fearlessly taking horrific pictures during the Westgate shopping mall attack in Kenya. Retelling his story in Tanzania, Mathenge relived the incident for which he put his life on the line to document the assault on innocent people at the mall.

“My son and I were travelling to a wedding when we got a call from a family friend who was stuck in the mall. She told us about what was going on there. I turned the car to see if I could go and help her. Because I am a newsman, I took my camera with me and tried to take as many pictures as possible. I want to dedicate this award to my son who convinced me to go and try to help our friend. I also dedicate it to those who lost their close relations in the attack. Stories like this are sad, but it is important to show the world the works of these evil men. Terrorism is wrong and we should all fight it,” said an emotional Mathenge.

After learning of his ordeal and bravado, it was no surprise that the overall accolade – the CNN Multichoice African Journalist 2014 Award – also went to Mathenge.

Speaking to Tonight after the ceremony, Thekiso conceded defeat, agreeing that his competitor had better material.

“I think in any other year it would have been easier to take the award home. The way in which I presented the great leader Nelson Mandela, captured a historic moment in history which can never be repeated. But if you look at Mathenge’s pictures and the emotions those pictures evoke, you understand why he deserves this.

“He literally entered a mall out of which people were fleeing, armed with a camera and deaf to the gunfire and took pictures that transported us all to where it happened. That’s really something.”

Also in attendance was CNN correspondent Isha Sesay who with other partners and judges held a workshop where they spoke of the media’s coverage of Ebola.

“I am a self-declared angry black woman because sitting from my vantage point in Atlanta, Georgia, I have a very tense relationship with the story because I am living in the US but my family is in Sierra Leone.

“Having that connection to it and living in the US which has taken a rather bizarre approach to the public emergency in Africa, makes me sad. There is lack of information. A few weeks ago when I was at the airport a driver asked me where I am from and I told him Sierra Leone. He backed away. It showed just how bad the media have covered this story. In the US there is a lack of information and empathy,” said Sesay. This prompted the news anchor to come up with the website – www.eboladeeply.org – where anyone can get updates on the Ebola situation.

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