Twenty five years ago, the world held its breath; one country in the palm of the human-verse

Photo Award winning photojournalist, Yannis Kontos - for more of his amazing photos go here

Twenty five years ago, a generation or so ago, we watched, some chewed their nails, others cradled their heads in open palms. Was this it? Was this the moment that humanity would be the victor?

A pariah state, South Africa, that had been ostracised from the world because it legally and plaintively viewed non-whites, black people in particular, as sub human had its chance to put the past behind it.

Apartheid, the word does not easily trip of the tongue today alongside other inequities, but it was ugly, fearsome, and real. To socialise, to challenge, to be, to walk down the road and dare hold the hand of someone white incurred wrath, abuse and assaults from white, even sometimes blacks trying to figure out what they were witnessing.

This, the tail end even of Apartheid (1994). I was walking behind a friend; a Londoner, a model, who’d had a child with a South African. They were nonchalant as they strode downtown Joburg. Me, six paces behind could see the orbit of red emotions flaring towards them.

I’d been in South Africa now for little over 18 months, a strategic attempt on my part two years earlier to get a front row seat to the biggest international story of the decade thus far.

I’d left London, part direct thought; other, escaping the toxicity of a climate in which a mini UK recession meant if you were a young reporter searching for work, if you were a young black reporter searching for work expect lean times ahead.

I had spent eight years previously in Ghana, growing up under a regime that festered corruption, counteracted by coups. This clip here was heard live.

In the late 1990s when I did a job for Ghana TV and they asked me how they could pay me, I asked for the Jerry John Rawling’s recording (above) of the coup on that day.

South Africa was closing in on the eye of the prize and there were many forces, hidden and some known, politicking and threatening all sorts. I was fortunate in my education.

My sojourn to SA prompted by an on-air exchange with its ambassador led to a triumvirate friendship with different figures: a leading theatre director and his friends which included diplomats, a cadre of young progressives black and white, and ANC activists and journalists. Something that would help in creating a raft of programmes in 1992, such as this for the domestic broadcaster, “Through the Eyes of a Child”.

I got to know a world which was uniquely complex, but I could navigate by how I opened my mouth. Shut, I could be any black South African, though many took me for coloured. Open with a London accent I was British. Open with my Ghanaian accent I was an African foreigner. I could, with the help of my friends like Milton Nkosi, get in and out of Townships, and if the feeling overcame me engage in Kwame Nkrumah’s ideals of African empowerment.

Every student, at least in my college in Ghana, was taught about Nkrumah and history told us about Mandela and many of his colleagues whom either schooled in Ghana or had a great affinity with the country.

Strangely, South Africa’s ultimate story was one that precluded others. An irony of mega proportions. Perhaps, it being the catch of any foreign news outlet, and everyone who was anyone was in South Africa, meant the big guns only were allowed in town.

At a Mandela press conference when I was working for ABC News as a producer, and terrifyingly asked the first three questions, this was evident. I was the only black british broadcast journalist, or one of a handful on the ground. If you were there too, please ping me, I’d like to apologies and correct my myth. Diversity wasn’t a badge of note back then, but think today about looking through the archives and how the world is shaped by narratives.

I earned my spurs reporting South Africa from the 1980s on BBC Radio Leicester, attending various Wembley live band conferences, opened by (Sir) Lenny Henry and British pop.

The narratives weren’t a wrongun, but nuance is something you need when reporting, otherwise translated as a having a different world view. Five years later when I produced and directed Africa’s first co-production under the exec production of Edward Boateng, then head of CNN Africa, now Ghana’s Ambassador to China, we looked to at how each country could report through the lens of its own culture, language and historicity.

Twenty-five years ago then, South Africa’s gathered in long unwinding queues to vote in their first election. The day before violence threatened captured below in reports to the BBC World Service.
The day before, a 40 minute documentary would air on BBC Radio 4. A fitting honest tribute, I think, to a country and people anyone could easily fall in love with. It stands as one of the only international documentaries played on domestic South African radio.

Twenty five years ago we held our breath. The elections passed. Nelson Mandela became president and South Africa titled the earth’s axis to humanism.

But as I would find out from many South Africans five years later in a Channel 4 News videojournalist piece, there had been a political transformation, but not a social one. Today, South Africans go to the poll. The world again is watching, thought with less scrutiny around race, but wealth; wealth, its distribution connected to race, nepotism, corruption and class.

And looming in the distance, less we dare not speak its name are the forces that are wanting to tilt the Ukraine, UK, Europe and US away from humanism. Twenty five years ago they South Africa held the world in their palm. Where will they be in another twenty five years?

End

Dr David Dunkley Gyimah is an international award winning journalist and the first Brit to win the coveted Knight Batten Award for Innovation in Journalism. He’s an artist, creative and technologist; a former artist in residence at the Southbank Centre, and was one of the younger members in the 1990s to join Chatham House. He’s been a journalist for thirty years and is currently based at te Cardiff School of Journalism. He’s behind the Cinema Journalism movement. More here

How US politicians play the media with ‘dead cats’.

 In the run up to the UK General Election in 2015, with the Labour party gaining head steam, the chips looked like falling for its leader Ed Milliband — a doppler-type figure aiming to be somewhere between Bernie Sanders and Roger Ramjet — edging into Downing Street.

Labour’s advisors, following a series of political Harry Houdinis — 100 business leaders were rubbishing Milliband in the conservative-partisan Telegraph — were to play an ace card.

Anyone living abroad, the wealthy and tax evaders, were about to be carpeted. Milliband announced he was scrapping a loophole in the law that enabled “non-domiciled” UK residents to avoid paying any tax on foreign income.

Canny political calculations, his advisors noted, would give Labour at least three days of headlines, effectively controlling the news agenda and picking up more steam amongst the electorate.

The Conservative party knew it too and played one of their most dastardly campaign strategies. One of the conservative’s more respected politicians, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, presented in the media as a mild mannered person, did a Trump. Sorry mate the Brits got their first.

In PR terms it’s called a ‘Dead Cat’, a strategy coined by Australian strategist Lynton Crosby, who was hired to be the Conservative’s campaign director. Simply put, imagine you’re at a dinner with your family. You’re winning the argument about why Bobby, your brother should not be going out with friends in Mum’s car when he’s five times over the drinking limit. Then Bobby puts his hand under the table and the next thing places a dead cat on the table. What happens next?

Everybody stops talking about Bobby’s traits and screams, ‘There’s a dead cat on the table’. For the forseaable future it’s all about the dead moggy.

For Labour, Fallon crowed to the media that Milliband was unfit to be Prime Minister because he had stabbed his brother in the back in winning the party leadership. He couldn’t be trusted.

It was an outrageous comment axiomatic with Trumpisms. Labour knew it. Some advisors, it’s said, even quietly admired the chutzpah. The Conservative’s knew it. And the media knew it too. But the collegiate village-environment of mainstream media couldn’t resist the bait.

Milliband’s initiative had been pole-axed and the media led for a series of days with the Labour leader’s lack of integrity and Fallon’s bromide comments. For as long as Trump’s campaign has been running, the reality TV star who knows how the media function has been placing one dead cat on the table after another. And the media has proved inept to see through them.

Being out of the limelight has its draw backs, so Trump’s dead cats serve to re-orientate the media’s gaze on him, providing him with the oxygen to be nicey-nicey with his audience, play the media victim, shape-shift to his audience’s preferences, before teeing up the next cat.

The Art of My Praxis - Video journalism film making

Jude Kelly asked the question: "what does this mean for you then?"

I explained, citing the intervention of Mark Cousin, one of the UK's leading film historians and an acclaimed film and documentary maker. Mark's recent piece, The First Film he describes as magical-realist is a road videojournalism can tread.

He and I had exchanged ideas; actually I had sought more from him, than him me in the days we had together under the banner of "Collision".

Collision devised by Jude, the artistic director of the SouthBank Centre, with Jeremy Deller, an artist in residence and turner prize winner, has been a space for artists and their invited guests to collaborate.

Back to the question. I explained some more.

Art Videojournalism

Then the pieces begun to reconfigure. That's not to say I hadn't thought about this. Indeed I have made no secret about the fact that a practice like videojournalism is unequivocally and unapologetically subjective.

I have also been looking to study its form unwittingly through the arts and artistic field of expression including Phd research.

Here Jude laid out the "self". In essence, as I reflected the art mode or fresh cinematic paradigm may constitute a new form, but it cannot and should not be divorced from the self.

This isn't the same as default subjectivity; the pretense of trying to be objective when frankly you can't. It's more a celebration of, for want of a better example, Jacques Ranciere's Politics of Aesthetic - on my reading list.

My thanks here are due to Eyal Weizman.Thank you.

Politics of aesthetic videojournalism

Explained to me over supper - an expanding space that constitutes the audible and the seen. Here in lies the aesthetic. This is Ranciere, politics is not the physical warring conflicting faction we see in the papers, but something else tangible.

It is the line between the haves and havenots, that which affects you and that which does not.
It applies across the boundaries in my case of artistic videojournalism.

What can I bring from the outside into what I might call Ranciere's space? This really isn't mumbo jumbo. It's about tapping into one's own experience in a performative and interpretive manner.

We've been here before through the work of Chris Marker. Poets do it all the while. Writers wrap themselves around their own words. Musicians are their own song. Remove the artist and the song is an imitated cover version.


Videojournalism's authorship is thus both me unashamedly, and you as a practitioner. It's richer by our own experiences within a linked context to the stories we tell.

Does that mean in the absence of having never committed a crime you're a poorer narrator in talking about crime? Does the mean if you've never been to Haiti, you can't talk knowledgeably about a tragedy without the construct of parachute journalism?

These are questions [not specifically these ones] to be debated, which I invited further talk at City University in this video recorded by the BBC Journalism College.

The artistry in videojournalism would suggest metaphorically or physically finding windows into issues from within ourselves. Then the semiotic structure mined from any one of the reworked visual languages e.g. direct cinema, cinema verite, plays its hand.

Emotional reportage - does not mean showing emotion.

A couple of days back Camila Batmanghelidjh from Kids Company said what we, a nation needs now is a shift towards an emotional economy. The context was within the neglect of care of our young.

It's big news again within two boys assaulting others. We blame the damaged children she said unawares or blithely ignoring the sources of their troubles. All sorts of other questions now emerge.

It must be time to shed the "removed body" from which we hide behind in solo video reportage. Naturally not all may agree for its conceived as potentially sullying the actual subject matter.

The artistic practice is understanding the dynamics of personalisation and what's perceived as inteference. In many ways that comes from experience, but traversed creatively allows for a narrative akin to a painter, a digital one, at work.

And the painter should know all about narrative, emotion and the self.

In the weeks to come I hope to talk some more about this.

When Obama Wins Versus When McCain Wins? - the programme

In 2001 I would undertake one of my last network television positions; it was time to try other things.

The last programme would leave me on a high in a high period as well.

It was the UK election and I was one of the political producers on Powerhouse, a Channel 4 Political Show, which had some of the best producers and reporters I had worked with Michael Brunson presenting and one Andrew Brown at its helm.

Micheal was one of those reporters every reporter ought to have studied. Among many things he turned pieces to camera around on the spot and with no notes.

Andrew Brown is the brother of Gordon Brown, Prime Minister.


Who Wins Concept
The show played a format idea pretty well imagining what life would be like under a Conservative, Liberal or Labour Government.

It was a mind bender to make; I produced one of the last ones, but the outcome yielded interesting results and dynamics amongst the parties.

In a sense, a classic piece of provocative TV, provocative in one case for Labour's team to take umbrage with the show when we assumed they would raise National Interest rates.

They'd made no such commitment thus far. But using the accountants BDO Stoy Hayward we crunched some numbers.

Looking at the US elections, Powerhouse thoughts began to take shape.

A programme that assumed firstly Obama had won and taking his pledges and running with them, attempting to determine the cost financially and the feel good factor he would bring or not.

Then a similar one for McCain.

Truth you wouldn't need a huge budget to do this; Powerhouse had a relatively small one compared to other network programmes.

You'd need to pour over their manifestos and archive to find how they're selling them for added info, then with the help of some graphics and avid supporters of both candidates set about with a non partisan number cruncher.

Like I said the results can lead to some interesting follow up exchanges and the films shouldn't be bad to watch either.

That said chances are it's already been done to death.. hasn't it?

Think Politics- Can MTV show the networks how to engage youth?

Any psephologist, actually anyone that follows wrestling may be able to recount the amazing story of professional wrestler turned politician Jesse Ventura, elected Governor of Minnesota in 1999.

Jesse snuck up from behind all the favourites and pollsters by mobilising the unhidden 1000s of wrestling fans who would vote for him.

At the time of his win, at a Freedom Forum seminar in the UK, I recall marveling with John Owen, the then Director of The Freedom Forum U.K, and Adam Clayton Powell III at the significance.

Jesse is widely acknowledged as the first person to use the net to reach out to voters.

It would take a few more years before the likes of Howard Dean or John Kerry would touch the net flame and even then you could argue no one's quite replicated Jesse's theme.


Youth Politics UK
If you want to count the youth vote and the net in the UK, then you'd do better 'duck feeding'.

Election upon election, candidates face the perennial problem of failing to capture the youth vote; the youth turned off, face down from the collective mores and didacticism.

In the 2001 election as one of the producers for ITN (UK) Channel 4's flagship political programme, Powerhouse, during the election we barely, if ever, touched youth issues.

So MTV's initiative, Think.MTV.com. in which 51 young multimedia reporters cover the 2008 US elections nationwide with with regular short videos and blogs makes for an interesting read and experiment.

A number of questions come to mind.

Can the youth vote have any real impact on the body politiks of the election?

Could the Net truly come into its own confounding anyone but the youth?

Could it be the youth who get the killer question in that might turn politicians' on song message sour.

A case of be careful what you say to the guy in the baseball cap who looks eight, cuz he may well have you on national TV.

Anything, anything that engages the youth with politicians has to be given merit.

But the underlying reason why the youth tune out is still there, so MTV may have to reinvent the wheel in political reportage to avoid playing only to the classroom swot.

In the UK, many moons back, a BBC youth current affairs programme Reportage had a modicum of success; their issue-led films were good, often picked up by the nationals.

But you often felt politicans spoke to the programme to appeal to mums and dads in an attempt to convey the missive: "we care about family values".

If MTV can get the politicans to be accountable to them, as the block swing vote, then we might just rest Jesse's accomplishment's to rest, for the mean time.

And with green issues and the environment looming large that might not be a feat too far.


Footnote.

In 2001 I ran a summer programme, Postcode for young people becoming film makers. We toyed with the idea of politics, but felt we couldn't reach the audience.
Perhaps that times now caught up with us

Dire politics in the UK

If you're old enough to remember this is all too familiar, the perception of alleged sleeze within government.

Donations to a party which seem to be, well, not done in the correct manner.

John Major's government crashed and burned for this.

An unhinged wheel that left the central political carriage unusable.

That whiff has now surfaced.

And what made it worse for Major was the perceived contempt for the electorate.

The PM has called an inquiry, but he will know that in politics perception is everything, and it'll take a cabinet war room PR excercise to undo this states of affairs.

oh dear