Marianne Thamm

ASSISTANT EDITOR AT DAILY MAVERICK

Why we think she’s brilliant: No matter what she turns her hand to – whether it’s as columnist, satirist, stand-up comic or editor – Marianne is consistently excellent. But mostly because she is an interrogator… of everything her razor-sharp BS detector picks up. It’s the moral imperative that led her, as a child, to question her German father about his role in the Nazi Luftwaffe, why black children were chased off lawns in her childhood South African suburb, and the corrupt viciousness of the apartheid system. It’s also what led her to literally dig the dirt on senior members of the EFF when she rifled through the trash they left behind at an expensive Camps Bay rental villa. Marianne is nothing if not hands-on: she was the assistant editor at Daily Maverick when she got her hands dirty, not a rookie journo.

This combination of curiosity, passion for justice and keen sense of the ridiculous has resulted in a rich and varied body of work. In a career with so many incarnations it’s hard to pick out a single story, but the two currents that consistently run through her work are the pursuit of justice for all and a deep-seated courage to stay the course. It’s what made her turn the tables on the head honchos at the Crime Intelligence division of SAPS who ordered the surveillance of journalists after her work laptop was stolen in a burglary at her home by outing them in a meticulously investigated and verified article. She publicly challenged them to knock on her door if they wanted information, since they clearly knew where she lived.

Her recent article, ‘Mr Malusi ‘Win-Win’ Gigaba, the smooth political sycophant with a tragic post-apartheid legacy’ is a masterful insight into a man who could be a Shakespearean tragic hero. Full of both pathos and distaste, it also, as always, carefully sticks to the facts.

What drives her: Working towards a country where her two daughters can cycle in the streets without fear.

❛The waves of violence that South African society has been exposed to… have left deep collective psychological wounds, which must be considered in any attempt to understand what is often termed the “senseless violence” that so dominates contemporary life.❜