A lesson we can learn from chilled-out zebras

Dear DM168 readers,

This week I drove to Joburg to be interviewed by Gordon Muller for his Doc and Guru podcast about newspapers, journalism, advertising, trust and online versus print media. I ended up going on an inward journey back into how I entered the world of journalism in the first place.

I realise that what I do at DM168 is the culmination of what I have loved doing ever since I started as a whippersnapper at South in 1987. I have always been drawn to writing, creating, reflecting, researching and interviewing, and working with talented writers, designers, editors and sub-editors.

It gives me great pleasure to figure out what to wrap into 64 pages for you every week, drawn from a week’s worth of human experience on this southern tip of Africa.

I try to give you what you should know to stay abreast of everything from the big political, social and economic cadences to what you may not know about inspirational South Africans who are making a difference. There’s also satire and fun because life is too short not to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

Something Muller said as I was walking to my car resonated with me. He said he could understand why many young South Africans seek opportunities abroad, but the reason he was committed to staying was having a sense of purpose and belonging.

When someone had asked him how he dealt with the fear and loathing in our political and social climate, he had said he behaves like a zebra in the Serengeti, alert and aware of predators, but happy to be alive in the sunshine on the vast open plains.

I love South Africans like Muller who are rational optimists. In this week’s newspaper we offer you an ensemble of them. We have Ferial Haffajee’s interview with Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, in which he assures us that, come hell or high water, those who have a case to answer for State Capture will be prosecuted. Tiyese Jeranji has written a heartwarming profile of Dr Daphney Conco, senior lecturer in public health at Wits University, about how her father threatened to put her to work tilling his fields because her Grade 10 results were so appalling. That spurred her to eventually attain her doctorate.

We have Hoseya Jubase’s story about a herdsman who was horrified by seeing young children being used to sell drugs, so he became their soccer coach. Even one of our most shocking stories, by Bheki Simelane, Suné Payne and Jubase, about attacks on Eskom technicians, discovers public-spirited communities protecting them from thugs.

Share your thoughts on these and other stories to heather@dailymaverick.co.za

Yours in defence of truth and zebras on the Serengeti, Heather