Reporting South Africa is produced by students from American colleges and universities and strives to be a reliable resource for news and information about South Africa. Student reporters, photojournalists and filmmakers, we are on the ground in South Africa as part of an innovative new journalism program South Africa: Social and Political Transformation offered by SIT Study Abroad. This program offers American students the unique opportunity of working as junior journalists in a newsroom alongside senior professionals at a South African media house. Mentored by veteran editors, students also produce a major feature story from South Africa. When these stories are exceptional, we offer our journalism – important untold stories from South Africa – to top-tier media outlets in the US.
SIT Study Abroad’s institutional partners in South Africa are the Sunday Times, Daily Maverick, and GroundUp.
Imraan Buccus has an undergraduate degree in education and a master’s degree in social policy from the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN). He is currently a PhD fellow at UKZN’s School of Politics, where he has also been a lecturer. He is widely published in academic journals and book chapters and is the former editor of the journal Critical Dialogue and the current editor of Democracy Dialogue. He is currently a columnist for Durban’s popular paper Mail & Guardian and is often called upon by television and radio stations to offer political analysis.
During apartheid, Imraan was active in student politics. In 2008 he was an Open Society Foundation Media Fellow, and in 2009 he appeared on the prestigious Mail & Guardian list of South Africa’s 200 Leading Young South Africans. Imraan worked as academic coordinator at Workers’ College, a progressive college for trade union members. He was involved in multiple international research projects and co-authored the National Framework on Public Participation for the South African government. During his time at the Centre for Public Participation, he led an initiative to bring policymaking spaces closer to ordinary people and led a project to assess participatory democracy in Namibia.
Martine Barker is the coordinator of the journalism program, based in Cape Town. She is a media professional with 40 years’ experience in journalism. Her long career has covered a wide range of roles. As a reporter at the Eastern Province Herald in the 1980s she covered the volatile Labour beat in the Eastern Cape where unions in the motor industry and the stevedore industry were at the forefront of the extra-parliamentary fight for social and political change in the country. She also reported on the impact of forced removals in the region. When she transferred to the Cape Times in Cape Town, she was assigned to the Education beat while also continuing to write on Labour issues. Moving into production, she honed her skills in copy editing and design. She has held the posts of Chief Sub-editor (Cape Argus), Opinions Editor (Cape Argus), Executive Editor – night (Cape Argus), Editor (acting, Weekend Argus), and the post of Managing Editor for the Cape region of the Independent Newspaper group for five years. Since 2014 Martine has worked as an independent consultant, specialising in journalism mentorship and training while taking on writing and editing commissions, and working on book- and publication-design projects.
Student Editors Spring 2017
EDITORS:
PROGRAM COMMUNICATIONS:
PHOTO EDITORS:
SOCIAL MEDIA:
WEB DEVELOPER:
