Rhodes Journalism Review is now online with a new monthly edition called RJRALIVE (www.rjr.ru.ac.za/).
This month’s edition is both a reflection on legacies and archives, and a snapshot of former president Nelson Mandela’s life. The edition features a collection of stories, pictures and sound from a range of South African (and international) voices.
Former Rhodes students Brett Lock and Leon Lazarus recently dedicated a podcast to Madiba on their South African music blog, “Tune me What?”, and Joe Richman has produced an in-depth audio series of Madiba’s life on the Radio Diaries website. Links to both sites are provided in this edition.
The writers have been asked to think about Mandela’s life, and the recent coverage of his death. Sarah Nuttall writes about Madiba’s mortality, Sandile Memela explores Madiba as a symbol of social cohesion, and Marianne Thamm, Khadija Patel, and Yusuf Omar grapple with the places where Mandela once stood and what will be left when he’s gone.
Minette Nieuwoudt and Stephano Radaelli from Media Tenor provide an analysis of the media coverage of Mandela’s recent illness, and Angie Kapelianis tells her personal experience of constructing obituaries about legacies.
When reporting on this era, the question of documenting these events, of storing images for future generations, lead us to think about archives in South Africa. Martha Evans writes about controlling the image of Mandela, and we have stories by Karen von Veh (previously published in de arte and reprinted with special permission), Cedric Nunn and Gavin Brown providing a glimpse into the process and effects of building a national archive.
The RJR is published by the School of Journalism and Media Studies, Rhodes University. Prof Anthea Garman is the Editor and Ms Annetjie van Wynegaard, Commissioning Editor.