A look inside the discipline, craft, and consistency behind award-winning feature journalism. I received the National Press Club and UNISA Journalist of the Year Award for Features at the 2025 awards in May this year. The competition is adjudicated by a panel of industry experts and academics who assess work published from January to December […]
The story of Dietrich in Joburg is complex and inspiring, one of the many ghostly, fragile strands of our half-remembered city. It is also the story of the sheer guts and determination of a very young man searching for something greater than what his limited world seemed to offer. This article first appeared in The
Glamour and Ghosts: The Time Marlene Dietrich Fell in Love with Joburg Read More »
I remember the house in Majwemasweu township near Brandfort so vividly. It was a clean, neat house, painted white. There was a green lawn and a small willow tree in the front. It was Winnie Mandela’s home and tiny clinic that she had established there in exile. I was a young soundman working freelance for Dutch
Essay | Winnie, Hennie and Me: An Erstwhile Soundman Remembers 3 Days in Brandfort Read More »
In a News24 essay, Hamilton Wende explores the lives of zama zamas trapped between poverty, danger and hope. Rather than reducing illegal miners to headlines, he reveals their humanity, dreams and struggles for a better future. The essay examines the complex social and economic realities driving illegal mining and questions simplistic political responses to the
‘Only God knows how this will end’: Meet the zama zamas dreaming of better lives Read More »
In a News24 opinion piece, Hamilton Wende reflects on a chance encounter with a stranger on a New York subway shortly after Nelson Mandela’s release from prison. The conversation challenged his assumptions and taught him the value of engaging with people whose views differ from his own. Drawing on that experience, Wende argues that dialogue,
OPINION | A subway stranger taught me to engage… even with ambassadors like Bozell Read More »
As I take out the old fishing pliers, I can smell the sea on the old Transkei coast and hear the surf against the rocks. I can feel the scratchy wool of my father’s jersey as he cradled me in his arms and taught me to fasten a sinker, a hook and a wire trace
Photographs and memories: A pair of rusty fishing pliers and a faded Instamatic snapshot Read More »
Years ago, in my childhood, I was being driven in a car down Louis Botha Avenue. Ahead of us, prominent on the Linksfield Ridge, was a magnificent white house. ‘That,’ the adult in the car told me, ‘is the house where the Shah of Iran lived during the Second World War.’
Jo’burg’s Forgotten Royal History Read More »
5 January – EWN: The inquest into the deaths of former apartheid activists known as the Cradock Four has been reopened following new evidence.
Matthew Goniwe, Sparrow Mkonto, Fort Calata and Sicelo Mhlauli were abducted and killed in 1985 while on their way home to Cradock in the Eastern Cape.
Adriaan Vlok – the old man and the dark shadow of the past Read More »
As a brutal war rages in Europe, this writer considers what South Africa’s own violent history reflects to the wider world about reconciliation and even redemption. I have been haunted by this image for months: an old man in an ill-fitting, pale blue shirt and flapping khaki pants, wearing a grey woollen beanie on his
Reconciliation and redemption: The old man and the dark shadow of the past Read More »
The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2021 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved. By Hamilton Wende and Niamh Kennedy, CNN CNN — South Africa has passed the peak of its Omicron outbreak, according to one of the country’s top scientific researchers. The country has “surpassed the peak of the Omicron wave now, driven by the
South Africa has Passed its Omicron Outbreak Peak, Top Researcher Says Read More »